2022: A tough year for HC virgin PSF and low-melting PSF

HC virgin PSF has experienced further production cut during end-Jun and early Jul, making the operating rate below 50%. Amid the fall of crude oil, it got traded lower at 8,400-8,900yuan/mt. Some large plants offered high, while some new plants offered lower at about 8,200yuan/mt. The price spread between HC virgin PSF and HC re-PSF fell back to about 1,000yuan/mt.

Low-melting PSF price maintained recently. Traders purchased a lot earlier. When it rose to 9,700-10,000yuan/mt, the transactions turned sparse. Then from mid-Jun, it started to decline and traders undersold. At that time, the market price was mixed and the traded price quickly dropped to 9,050-9,400yuan/mt. On the other hand, low-melting PSF suffered great losses this year, even worse than HC virgin PSF, especially in Q2. Therefore, the plants cut production intensively, dragging down the operating rate to 20% at the least. Currently, some of them have resumed and overall operating rate rallied to more than 70%.

2022 is a tough year for HC virgin PSF and low-melting PSF both of which have lost the most ground compared with the past years with the largest losses of more than 500yuan/mt and 750yuan/mt respectively. The plants are even resigned to their fate, and offer along with the fluctuation of feedstock side. In terms of the capacity expansion, Xinfengming has planned to start up HC virgin PSF and low-melting PSF projects in Aug and additionally, one million tons/yr direct-spun PSF is under planning in Q4 which has potential to be postponed.