Turkey’s polymer imports for December outpace imports in the past 11 months

According to the data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), Turkey’s plastics imports in December 2010 rose both on a monthly and yearly basis. As per Chemorbis, Turkey’s plastics imports were not only the highest import totals of the previous 11 months in 2010 but also the highest figures recorded since December 2000. The country imported 366,000 tons of plastics in December 2010, which represents a jump of 42,000 tons when compared to the previous month of the same year. Similar to the previous month, the largest stake of overall imports belonged to Saudi Arabia with almost 84,224 tons, which was followed by the United States with 32,516 tons and by Belgium with almost 23,000 tons. Of the total polymer imports in December 2010, origins which are subject to customs duties accounted for 240,000 tons, while duty-free origins accounted for a smaller quantity of 126,000 tons. In December, both dutiable and duty-free origins saw a slight improvement compared to the previous month of the same year. On a product by product basis, 88,000 tons of homo PP cargoes were imported in the month of December in total, representing no change compared to the previous month. The main supply source, Saudi Arabia, had again the largest share of homo PP imports to Turkey with more than 47,000 tons, which was followed by India with 10,712 tons and Greece with 9,554 tons. In the S-PVC market, Turkey imported 74,000 tons of material in December, seeing a monthly rise of 21,000 tons. The US had the largest portion of PVC imports with more than 29,225 tons. Thailand and Norway were the other largest exporters with 5,339 tons and 3,625 tons respectively. In the PE market, 19,000 tons of LDPE was imported in December, rising around 4,000 tons from the previous month. Iranian origin was the most preferred one with 3,890 tons while it was followed by Saudi Arabian and Spanish origins with import totals of more than 3,400 and 2,000 tons, respectively. For HDPE, the country’s import total was almost unchanged month over month. Turkey imported 51,000 tons of material with more than one third of its total HDPE imports belonging to Saudi Arabia with 15,312 tons. Iran and Ukraine were the other countries from where Turkey imported the largest HDPE volumes in December 2010 with import totals of more than 7,200 tons and 3,800 tons respectively. The total LLDPE imports were also unchanged on a monthly basis, with 27,000 tons. Almost half of the total imports were from Saudi Arabia while Libya and Holland were the other largest LLDPE exporters to Turkey, supplying more than 1,000 tons each. Looking at the country’s PS imports, Turkey imported 26,000 tons of material, which indicates no change from the previous month. The top three exporters were Belgium with 9,394 tons, Thailand with 4,393 tons and South Korea with 1,278 tons.