China’s total polymer imports rebound in Feb 2012

According to data from Chinese Customs, China’s polymer imports posted a noticeable rise in February 2012 from January 2012, as per ChemOrbis. With this monthly increase, the country largely compensated for the steep drop recorded in December 2011 and January 2012, largely due to the occurence of the weeklong Chinese New Year holidays in January this year instead of February as usual- resulting in depressed import figures for January. As a result, the new February figures were the highest for the month going back to 2001. According to data from Chinese Customs, China’s polymer imports posted a noticeable rise from 1.134 mln tons in January 2012 to 1.478 mln tons in February 2012, a jump of 344,000 tons month over month. With this monthly increase, the country largely compensated for the steep drop recorded from December 2011 to January 2012. Apart from major exporters such as Saudi Arabia (295,423 tons), South Korea (260,605 tons) and Taiwan (172,766 tons), the US (99,611 tons), Thailand (95,866 tons) and the United Arab Emirates (89,400 tons) were the top polymer exporters to China in February 2012, with all of these countries increasing their total export volumes to China when compared to the previous month. Saudi Arabia, Oman and Japan almost doubled their total polymer exports to China over the month while Iran’s polymer exports to China fell to only around half of the level seen in January. China’s homo-PP imports for February rose from January to reach 357,000 tons. The top five exporters of homo-PP to China in February were Saudi Arabia (97,905 tons), South Korea (74,693 tons), the United Arab Emirates (29,808 tons), India (26,908 tons) and Taiwan (26,459 tons) as per the pricing service of ChemOrbis. PVC imports rose to 91,000 tons in February from around 77,000 tons in January. The US (43,676 tons), Taiwan (25,229 tons) and Japan (14,166 tons) had the largest stake in the country’s total PVC imports, with South Korea (2,235 tons) and Thailand (2,090 tons) were the closest followers. China’s PE imports were up for all products. From January to February, total imports reached 139,000 tons for LDPE, 377,000 tons for HDPE and 203,000 tons for LLDPE. Saudi Arabia, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Iran were the top four exporters for LDPE and HDPE while Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Thailand had the largest stake in the country’s total LLDPE imports.China’s PS imports were also up to 75,000 tons in February from 57,000 tons in January. 24,849 tons of PS were imported from Taiwan, 18,629 tons from South Korea and 12,436 tons from Hong Kong. Imports from Taiwan and South Korea were up on a monthly basis while imports from Hong Kong were down slightly month over month.