The Southeast Asia-Northeast Asia polyethylene terephthalate price spread is likely to narrow in coming weeks amid rising PET plant operations in SEA, market sources said late Wednesday.
Typically, the SEA PET price is pegged higher than NEA due to lower freight cost to the west, where most customers for Asia origin cargoes are based. On Wednesday, the SEA-NEA PET spread was pegged at $20/mt, inching up $1/mt from the previous week.
Market sources said PET supplies in SEA are slowly increasing. In Thailand, Indorama restarted its 178,000 mt/year PET plant in April after an emergency shutdown at the end of September last year following a serious flooding. The plant will reach full operations by the end of May.
The situation in the Asian PET market is different from that in feedstock purified terephthalic acid market, in which the spread between SEA and NEA recently widened. The SEA-NEA PTA spread has been pegged at $6/mt since late April.
This was due to tight PTA supplies in SEA. Mitsui Chemicals is moving PTA from its affiliate companies in Indonesia and Thailand amid an emergency shutdown of its 400,000 mt/year Iwakuni-Otake plant. The plant was shut down on April 22 following an explosion at its resorcinol plant at the same site.
