Delivers weekly insights into the global plastic resin markets, focusing on key products like polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Highlights regional price trends, supply and demand shifts, logistics disruptions, and policy impacts shaping the polymer industry.
General Thoughts: Spot polymer prices reflect stabilization in early 2026 as crude strength, feedstock dispersion, and production curbs lift price floors, with 1H26 favoring margin defense and selective upside over demand-led recovery.
Polyethylene (PE): Early-2026 PE prices firm on rising ex-US naphtha costs and operating discipline, with cautious global buying
General Thoughts: Early-2026 polymer spot price stabilization masks weak production margins, accelerating restructuring and capital discipline in 1Q26 as producers right-size operations to restore profitability and lift returns.
Polyethylene (PE): Early-2026 PE prices show support, but as restocking fades and cost curve flattening concerns mount, exports offer marginal relief, leaving
General Thoughts: Global polymer markets continue to clear tactically, not cyclically, in late 2025 as oversupply, logistics normalization, and discipline overwhelm demand signals, leaving price floors dependent on exits, cost curves, and trade.
Polyethylene (PE): Market firmness reflects more positioning than balance, as China anchors clearing prices, grade-level inventories diverge,
General Thoughts: Global polymer markets are positioned to exit 2025 structurally oversupplied, as excess capacity further weakens oil-to-resin linkages and shifts 2026 outcomes toward rationalization over cyclical recovery dynamics.
Polyethylene (PE): Markets globally show regional firmness in late 2025, though it masks imbalances, as China-driven oversupply caps clearing levels and
General Thoughts: Collapsing global polyolefin margins, muted demand elasticity, and an oil-to-gas price ratio at 2025 lows combine to favor an acceleration of global capacity rationalizations, set to shift competitive advantage in 2026.
Polyethylene (PE): Markets undervalue how China’s persistent oversupply, Europe’s deepening import dependence, and volatile US feedstocks together
General Thoughts: Weak manufacturing, collapsing freight, and flattening cost curves are exerting relentless oversupply pressure on global polymers, revealing fragile price floors held in part with the hope of rebalanced positions into 2026.
Polyethylene (PE): Global PE markets balance modest Western firmness against lingering Asian price weakness as capacity additions,
General Thoughts: Underappreciated polymer market dynamics center on accelerating cost-curve compression, rising China-driven trade distortions, and tighter Western markets, collectively redesigning early 2026 competitive outcomes.
Polyethylene (PE): Global PE markets edge toward stabilization as disciplined Western rate cuts, emerging regional price floors, and persistent yet easing Asian oversupply collectively position
Polymer Global Analysis Resin To Riches: Weekly Plastic Market Insights Exhibit 1 – Chart of the Day: Capital discipline positions Sealed Air for CD&R’s value-driven acquisition thesis. Source: Sealed Air – 3Q25 Earnings Call Presentation, November 2025
General Thoughts: Global polymers are entering a structural reset period where energy asymmetry, policy defense, and oversupply, not demand cycles, are redefining cost advantage, rationalizations and long-term product competitiveness.
Polyethylene (PE): The global PE production cost curve is flattening as range-bound naphtha values and USGC ethane price inflation signal a
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