Turkey’s local PP market jumps on supply limitations

The firming in Turkey’s local PP market gained momentum on rapid hikes from distributors amidst limited supply. The rising trend kicked off around two weeks ago when market sentiment reversed on Petkim’s hike announcement in early February. Distributors have issued larger hikes on homo-PP offers recently, citing limited prompt supplies, while Petkim’s second hike for this month, which came on Monday, also encouraged sellers to take a firmer stance on their prices.

The prevailing locally-held homo PP raffia range has been reported at $1270-1300/ton ex-warehouse Turkey, cash inc VAT. The level spiked by $100-130/ton when compared to last week. According to ChemOrbis Price Index, the locally-held PP raffia market has jumped by $180/ton on a weekly average since the beginning of February in Turkey.

“We raised our homo-PP raffia and injection offers to $1280/ton on Friday. We issued an additional increase of $20/ton following the increase from the domestic producer early this week as buying interest is active and prompt availability is tight,” a distributor reported.

A sack maker stated, “We heard that a buyer was offered PP raffia at $1270/ton while his counter bid at $1250/ton was rejected.” The rumor was that there was some Turkmen material available at $1250/ton at the start of the week, a trader claimed, adding that they were not able to find that price though.

Some players predict that the PP market may continue to move up next week depending on Petkim’s pricing policy. The domestic producer raised its PP list prices by $30-35/ton in total following a bearish trend that had been in place since June of last year.