European PVC yields to patchy demand in Turkey, follows US PVC lower

European PVC offers reached a year-high in Turkey in early October in line with the renewed hike attempts of regional suppliers, based on the average prices on ChemOrbis Price Index, before they have surrendered to the persistently thin state of demand and have turned down this week. This fall has just followed the softening trend that has already been in place for US PVC offers for the past 4-5 weeks.

As can be seen from the graph prepared by ChemOrbis Price Wizard, duty-free import PVC offers in Turkey, which are largely comprised of European origins, were on an upward run in June and followed a mostly stable path in July and August. They were up again in September and reached the highest level of the year in early October. Meanwhile, the upturn in European PVC offers persisted throughout September despite the fact that US PVC already started to soften by then.



PVC demand has been fairly thin in Turkey for the past few months, playing a major role in the softening that came for the first time in three months for European PVC. Although offers from Europe tried to defy the softening in US PVC in September, they could not remain indifferent to the weakness of demand any longer and have come down this week.

“Although a West European PVC maker was reluctant to step back from its modest hike attempt for October, traders have taken the lead and given up in response to lower bids this week,” opined a player.

In Europe’s local markets, meanwhile, PVC suppliers also had to concede to smaller increases when compared to their initial hike requests. Having already paid larger increases in September as a result of sellers’ quest for margin improvement, buyers have resisted paying more than half of the increase in ethylene contracts in October.

As for November, European players are mostly voicing soft expectations given the end of the high season, the lack of supply issues and the globally weak sentiment in PVC markets. However, there are mixed indications from the upstream markets, where naphtha has been weak and ethylene has firmed back up so far in October.