Polystyrene prices in Europe announced with rollovers

Several players in Europe are scheduled to break for summer holidays are remain absent from the polymer markets during August, as per ChemOrbis. Prior to the holidays, new PS prices for the month were revealed this week with rollovers from July. The steady announcements were in line with buyers’ buy ideas since monomer contracts didn’t record any considerable changes from last month. A source from a West European producer, who revealed stable price levels for August, commented that the PS market is quiet. “No major changes are likely for the moment as Italian players will not come back to their desks before the end of August,” he stated. He believes that prices will not be adjusted down for now. “Meanwhile, we expect to see better demand from North European countries such as Benelux and Germany which already returned back from holidays,” he further said. A distributor of a West European source reported that they rolled over their initial PS prices for August in accordance with their supplier’s pricing policy ahead of summer holidays. A second distributor offered unchanged PS offers for a South European origin. “The activity is very calm so far this week as most converters are going to halt their production and are postponing their purchases to the end of August until after summer holidays,” he highlighted. A distributor offered West European PS materials in Germany, saying, “We decided to roll over our offers and the premium between HIPS and GPPS has become €80/ton since the cost of butadiene has been unchanged for 3 months now.” “We are still waiting for official August offers from our West European supplier. We have enough allocations left from July to be covered for August, while we expect to pay rollovers in our purchases after the monomer settlement,” a trader mentioned. Demand will be weak for August and may revive a bit in the end of the month when buyers come back to their desks after holidays, according to him. A food container maker reported that they are not rushing to buy materials as they will close their factory for 1-2 weeks for holidays. Plus, their end business is not performing well. “We expect to see a stable trend this month. We will purchase material at the end of the month according to our needs.” Another converter already paid rollovers for his August needs. “End product demand is below expectations both from Italy and other markets compared to last year. We will stop production starting from next week for two weeks,” he reported. A buyer received rollovers for West and South European PS cargos. “Our supplier for Egyptian material asked for slight increases month over month, but we rejected them given softer upstream costs. We don’t exclude a possibility for a relief in prices depending on the direction of feedstock markets in the days to come,” he noted. The buyer plans to suspend production for 2 weeks and to meet their needs at the end of August based on end product demand. According to ChemOrbis, meanwhile, in nearby Turkey, new PS offers for two different West European origins were revealed with slight gains of €10-25/ton from the last July levels. These gains came following the fall in euro/USD parity. Players think that these initial offers will later be adjusted down depending on demand.