Despite Dramatic drop in MMA prices in China, PMMA prices reported to be constant across Asia

In this week, the prices of MMA in China were rolled over to $1800/ton contract CFR Qingdao and observed to be constant across the Asian region with dramatic deflection. The weak market demand in the Asian region was driven by feeble trading as many downstream customers in China were heard to shutting down from middle January for the New Year Lunar Holiday and the pessimistic economy outlook as a result of the Covid-19 new variant – Omicron pandemic crisis.

However, MMA plant shutdown due to hovering crude oil and logistics cost along with port congestion hindered product delivery in the parts of America and Asia. As a result, MMA producers hesitate to decrease the prices further and compelled to rollover throughout the January. In Southeast Asia, market demand was stabilized, and most downstream cast steel producers hesitate to build up the inventories prior to New Year and operated their plant with low productivity in order to keep their inventories stagnant. Vietnamese domestic market demand seems solid. MMA offtook stays stable. In India, the demand was observed to be sluggish. The General Purpose (GP) PMMA prices is in the range of $2000-$2250/MT CFR Southeast Asia.

According to ChemAnalyst, with slow and sluggish demand it is expected that the prices of PMMA will remain stable on the lower end in the upcoming weeks. Succeeding Lunar New Year Holiday and Winter Olympics in China will result in low trading and market is expected to remain close for the upcoming weeks. The downstream producers will operate their plant cautiously in order to fulfil to market requirement and will avoid to further increase the inventories. In India, the demand of PMMA is expected to remain low with decline in feedstock Methyl Methacrylate prices.