April opens with increases on PP in Italy

05-Apr-12

Italy’s PP market is starting the month of April on a firming note after continuous price hikes seen over the past three months, as per ChemOrbis. Although there were no official price announcements from European producers at the time of press, distributors have opened their April business with new increases of €50-70/ton over their March levels following Europe’s higher propylene settlement, which rose by another €50/ton for April. Resellers had already been confident about a renewed upward trend, although buyers were voicing their reluctance to pay any further increases, with many preferring to wait as much as long as they can before restocking. A buyer told ChemOrbis, “We received an April offer from our regular West European supplier with €60/ton increases over last month. However, we are not planning to purchase any volumes for now as we have sufficient stocks for the time being. We will postpone our monthly purchases to the second half of the month since we believe that the increasing trend will come to an end soon and we will be able to obtain relatively lower prices.” A distributor offering on behalf of a Middle Eastern producer said, “We raised our prices by €50/ton compared to March. Demand is not great in general while availability from our supplier is not ample either given our supplier’s earlier production issues. We don’t expect the upward momentum to lose pace until the end of April. It’s too early to talk about a downturn in prices now.” Another distributor, who revealed his April sell ideas €70/ton higher for West European origins, explained, “We are yet to receive any guidelines from our supplier for April. In any case, we will look for an increase larger than the increase posted by the new propylene contract.” “We were offered West European homo PP €70/ton higher for April but we will wait for a while before engaging in new deals,” a PP converter said. Another converter repeated similar comments, saying, “We haven’t inquired about the new prices of suppliers yet. We prefer to wait until the second half of the month before replenishing our stocks. We hope to pay only small increases in the second half of April.”