According to data released by the Chinese Customs Agency, China's total polymer imports in December 2010 rose both on a monthly and yearly basis. The country imported 1.53 million tons of plastics in December, which represents a small increase of 81,000 tons when compared to the previous month of the same year. China's plastics imports in December 2010 were also the highest import totals for the month since December 2000.
The largest stake of overall imports during the year 2010 belonged to South Korea, with 3.24 million tons in total for the year, which was followed by Taiwan with 2.62 million tons and by Saudi Arabia with 1.9 million tons. The US and Japan were the other countries having the largest polymer exports to China in December 2010 with 1.24 million tons and 1.16 million tons, respectively.
Of the total polymer imports for the month of December 2010, origins which are subject to customs duties accounted for 1.5 million tons, while duty-free origins accounted for a small quantity of only 27,000 tons.
On a product by product basis, 396,000 tons of homo PP cargoes were imported in the month of December in total, indicating a slight increase of 22,000 tons over the previous month. The top three homo PP exporters to China in December 2010 were South Korea with 91,655 tons, Saudi Arabia with 88,772 tons and Taiwan with 53,433 tons.
In the PVC market, China imported 139,000 tons of material in December 2010, seeing a monthly increase of 24,000 tons. The US had the largest share of PVC imports to China with 46,159 tons, which was followed by Japan and Taiwan with more than 36,000 tons and 27,665 tons, respectively.
In the PE market, China imported 104,000 tons of LDPE, 302,000 tons of HDPE and 248,000 tons of LLDPE in December 2010, with the country’s total imports indicating a slight improvement on a monthly basis for all PE products. The largest exporters were Qatar with 12,600 tons of LDPE, South Korea with 59,444 tons of HDPE and Saudi Arabia with 65,843 tons of LLDPE imports to China.
Looking at the PS market, China imported 93,000 tons of PS in December 2010. The three largest PS exporters to China over this period were Taiwan with 31,398 tons, Hong Kong with 24,270 tons and South Korea with 15,194 tons.
