The tightening of plastic supplies will continue
The tightening of plastic supplies will continue
After the holiday, the market demand improved, the downstream production entered the peak season, the price of plastic was relatively stable, and in the last week it has seen a strong rally. In the environment of weak oil prices, plastic futures have bucked the trend, which has surprised many investors.
Downstream demand is entering peak season
The improvement in supply and demand is the main driver of the increase in plastic futures prices. March is the peak season river downstream of the production and sales, production enterprise starts to rebound, 55% - 70%, while the rest of the packaging film and plastic products production capacity is also improved, construction level between 40% - 60% on average. The recovery in downstream starts has led to demand for plastics. Recently, the downstream market has begun to increase its purchasing power after digesting the pre-holiday replenishing bank, and the spot transaction has improved. The petrochemical inventory data showed that the total inventories of the two petrochemical stocks fell back to the current 900,000 tonnes from 1.05 million tons before and after the Lantern Festival.
The drop in oil prices has weakened the impact on plastics
In terms of cost, comparing crude oil and plastic at the two lows before and after the festival, there is a clear gap between the two, indicating that the impact of oil price on plastics is weakening. In the whole crude oil - naphtha - ethylene-polyethylene industrial chain, the influence of crude oil on each link has changed. The fall in oil prices was mainly due to rising production and oversupply. But lower oil prices are more because of weaker demand from downstream refining installations. Because of the intensive maintenance of crude oil processing equipment in Asia and even the whole world, the production of raw materials of plastics, naphtha and ethylene has been in a tight supply, and prices have remained firm. The cost of plastic production has not come down because of lower oil prices. On the contrary, the cost of naphtha and vinyl is actually rising. In the next one to two months, the supply of raw materials will continue to be tight.
The supply is expected to be in short supply
In terms of years of performance, April is traditionally a slack season, but that doesn't mean the supply and demand situation will be looser. This is mainly because the contraction of the entire supply side will be more pronounced. According to the overhaul plan announced by the domestic manufacturers, the dushanzi, maoming petrochemical and yangtse basf entered the maintenance period in March and April. In addition, daqing petrochemical advanced into the maintenance period, the new energy of pu cheng was also forced into the maintenance state due to substandard environmental assessment. According to the measure of capacity and time of the maintenance equipment, the output is expected to fall back to 1.03 million to 1.05 million tons in April, and the output will be reduced by 70,000 to 100,000 tons compared with January and February.
From the point of view of imports, January - February showed signs of contraction, with a year-on-year decline. According to traders, "initially it was the fear of not booking, then the post-holiday surge, then the supply of problems, the unreported." Due to some manufacturer in Asia device fault or maintenance plan, lead to delay or cut orders, and other parts of Asia market demand is stable, the production enterprise offer are and the import price is on the domestic price premium, so as to affect the supply of imports. Therefore, it is expected that the supply of imports in April will appear similar to that of January and February, and again show signs of year-on-year contraction. China's imports in April were estimated to be between 600,000 and 620,000 tonnes in April, compared with a year earlier. Overall supply is expected to be around 1.65 million tons in April.
PE from the demand situation, the same period of last year's apparent demand in 1.7 million tons, according to 5% of the consumption growth is calculated, and forecast consumption of 1.77 million tons in April, there is a certain gap between supply and demand, is advantageous to the production enterprise to inventory.
Together on the cost side under the condition of no substantial changes, the future supply will be tight, although April into demand off-season, but the enterprise to the rhythm of the inventory will not change, plastic trend will remain strong, main 1509 contract is expected to exceed 10000 yuan/ton.
