A big price decrease for PET bottle resin was the top news in the February Polymer Points Live.
“This was more of an inventory restocking issue, just kind of kind of a rebalancing. ... Demand wasn't really that strong and there's still plenty of PET capacity available,” Senior Reporter Frank Esposito said in the Feb. 20 editorial livestream. (recording below)
“So we will be showing lower prices this month for a price change that happened in January. … We just had some coverage by Jim Johnson on our staff on the packaging market. Bottled water not growing as strong as it had, also CSD, carbonated soft drinks, not as big of a growth area as previous.
As of Feb. 20, the Plastics News resin pricing page does not reflect the January pricing news. In the livestream, Esposito also recapped other January pricing news, including increases for polyethylene and polypropylene and decreases for polystyrene.
Most North American PE producers have 5-cent price increases on the table for February and 3 cents for March. Esposito talked about market conditions, including export trends, and discussed whether those increases are likely to take hold.
Other topics included the impact of higher virgin PE pricing on recycled markets. The next Polymer Points Live is scheduled for Tuesday, March 19.