Last week was a challenging week for us spot resin trading, the Chicago Plastics Exchange said in its latest market report. Demand for resin has decreased, and some transactions are still difficult to complete. Dealers continue to reduce inventory, generally only in the continuous sales will purchase. The resin price of spot commodity further fell because of the scarcity of buyers and the accumulation of supply. Spot polyethylene (PE) prices fell by 2 cents due to greater discounts on the contract prices for substandard products and a large number of degraded / near quality materials. The price of polypropylene (PP) fell by a cent. The recovery of unit costs will offset the expected reduction in contract prices in April. Most participants realized that the historically low price of these resins would create an excellent opportunity to increase inventory, but it may be a while before prices continue to decline. Exports remain strong - producers are doing their best to move surplus materials out of the domestic market. Resin production is expected to eventually decline in April, according to data from the plastics exchange. Last week, PE spot market "stepped on the brake". Despite the lower prices, market activity is still limited. With the development of global epidemic, the turnover of plastic exchange is far below the average level. In April, as initial purchases surged, consumers began hoarding groceries and other items for weeks or even months, but other non essential businesses have been temporarily shut down for weeks and the supply chain has been affected. Spot PE prices have fallen steadily by 2 cents in the past week as film grade LDPE and injection grade LLDPE and other products lost part of the premium brought by previous tight supply. More and more processors are asking for lower contract prices in April, but it is unclear whether they will succeed or how much. Some manufacturers have cleared large inventories to help ease the burden of still strong production and slowing global demand. It is reported that many of the dumped materials will flow to China because China has restarted part of its economy, while other countries remain largely silent in response to the new coronavirus epidemic. Exported resins may not need to be processed now, as Chinese companies seem to have been taking advantage of this situation to acquire and store various commodities at low prices. PP spot trading slowed down with high availability, but trading volume was not ideal, and the price reversed the previous week's 1 cent increase. PP buyers are more active than PE customers and there are still transactions to be completed; however, with the decrease in the dealer's existing truck order inventory, most of the available purchases are new railway orders. In continuation of this trend, buyers generally seek more conservative truck delivery orders under uncertainty. In the completed limited transactions, copolymers are more popular than PP homopolymers, and the sales volume of railway orders still exceeds that of trucks. PGP monomer cost has recovered, so it is expected that the drop in April may be small. This article is translated by China Plastics online. If you need to reprint it, please indicate the source, otherwise it will be deemed as infringement.