LME announces changes to its plastics futures contracts

08-Feb-07

With effect from 25 June, London Metal Exchange has announced changes to its plastics futures contracts in a bid to boost trading. In addition to its existing global contracts for polypropylene and LLDPE, it will launch regional contracts covering Asia, Europe and North America for each of the PP and LLDPE contracts. The changes will revitalise the contracts, significantly improving liquidity, and therefore, allowing the contracts' wider use within the plastics industry. Another development is the creation of a spot futures market, as well as the global and regional contracts having a monthly basis, they will also be traded one and two days forward, emulating the spot market in the polymer supply chain. The LME is still working on other "prompt dates" which will be traded in the weeks between the spot dates and first forward month.