China’s polymer imports decline in February

According to data from Chinese Customs, the country’s February polymer imports posted significant losses from January for almost all products, as per Chemorbis. China’s polymer imports generally see a drop from January to February owing to the week-long Chinese New Year holidays in February and this year’s decrease was consistent with amounts seen over the past several years. Overall, China’s polymer imports fell 26.8% from January to reach 1.108 mln tons in February. Although China’s polymer imports witnessed a larger slippage from January to February in 2011 than in 2010, China’s polymer imports for the first two months of 2011 are slightly ahead of the country’s import figures for the same months of 2010 at 2.621 mln tons of imports for the first two months of the year. Looking at specific products, imports of homo-PP were down 29.8% from January at 271,000 tons, which was unchanged from the February 2010 numbers. Imports of copolymer-PP were down 33% from January to 65,000 tons, although this figure represented a 30% increase from the February 2010 numbers. The largest exporters of homo-PP to China in February were South Korea (58,870 tons), Saudi Arabia (39,703 tons), Taiwan (33,917 tons), India (24,154 tons) and Japan (20,348 tons). China’s homo-PP imports witnessed significant declines of 55.3% from Saudi Arabia and 44.8% from Singapore month over month while imports from the United Arab Emirates jumped from 4,901 tons in January to 17,894 tons in February. In the PE market, China’s imports of HDPE were down 38% from January and 20.8% from February 2010 at 206,000 tons. LLDPE imports were down 17.8% from January but just 1.1% from February 2010 at 175,000 tons. LDPE imports fell 38.7% from January and 48.4% from February 2010 at 65,000 tons. Looking at the first two months of the year, LDPE imports are down 38.5% from 2010 while LLDPE imports are down 3.5% and HDPE imports are down 13.6%. Saudi Arabia was the largest LLDPE exporter to China in February with 33,981 tons while Iran was the largest exporter of LDPE with 10,043 tons. China’s PVC imports for February were down 34.8% from January but up 17.3% from February 2010 at 88,000 tons. Looking at the first two months of the year, China’s PVC imports are up 32.7% during the first two months of 2011 when compared with the same period in 2010. The largest PVC exporters to China in February 2011 were Japan (27,680 tons), the United States of America (24,550 tons), Taiwan (19,674 tons), Indonesia (3,553 tons) and South Korea (3,274 tons). China’s PS imports fell 32.6% from January and 11.8% from February 2010 to reach 60,000 tons in February 2011. Over the first two months of the year, China’s 2011 PS imports have risen by 1.4% when compared with the first two months of 2010. The largest PS exporters to China in February 2011 were Taiwan (19,876 tons), Hong Kong (15,061 tons), South Korea (10,323 tons), Singapore (5,296 tons) and Japan (2,981 tons).