BlueClover

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📈 Market Update: July 17th, 2024 📊 🌐Propylene: Spot PGP prices settled up to 52cpp as of Monday July 16th in what has been a very active month for the feedstock. As of Monday, there were reportedly 2-3 active outages with PDH units causing a shortage of PGP in the market. Additionally, possible restocking of inventory for hurricane season and slightly better demand for PGP derivatives has pushed spot pricing further north. At this point in time, we are anticipating that monomer will settle up as much as 6cpp this month to 54cpp by month end. There is still a lot of time left, but all signs are pointing to another increase. ⚪Polypropylene: the PP markets have remained very active over the past couple of weeks with pricing for climbing alongside spot monomer. Long gone are the days of being able to buy spot widespec cars at deep discounts to monomer as most producers are marking virtually every grade of PP in low to mid-50s for good widespec HOPPs and mid-high 50s for good widespec COPPs. There have been some producers who have reduced operating rates in July which in all likelihood can be attributed to the shortage of propylene in the market, but operating rates have been hovering around 75%, which is still short of the 85% that would indicate a "balanced" market. Subscribe to our "Brainfood Report" at https://lnkd.in/gP2Mv3Ax and get our full market insights, POV, and more sent directly to your inbox!

📈 Market Update: May 28th, 2024 📊   🌐Propylene: Spot PGP prices settled up to 43.25cpp as of Friday May 24th and at this point in time we are anticipating that PGP will settle down 2cpp for the month to 46cpp. Our team has fortunately been directionally correct on the price of spot/ contract monomer since our March/April reports, however, we incorrectly guessed that physical PGP pricing would "trend towards the upper 30s thru the end of May." There has been a recent uptick in PGP pricing as a result of a demand bump in PGP from PP production units that have returned or are returning from Force Majeure. We are still anticipating a further retreat in June for a multitude of reason that we explain in the most recent Brainfood report. ⚪Polypropylene: Despite the slight tick up in spot PGP, spot PP markets are flat over the past two weeks. Widespec HomoPP for railcars freight friendly is transacting in the 47-52cpp range depending on quality. Widespec Impact CoPP for railcars freight friendly is transacting in the 53- 58cpp range depending on grade and quality. If physical PGP pricing slides 4 to 7cpp lower from today’s pricing than BlueClover expects widespec PP pricing to match that move lower. Prime PP may not move lower by the same delta as producers have margin enhancement on the table for May and/or June. Subscribe to our "Brainfood Report" at https://lnkd.in/gP2Mv3Ax and get our full market insights, POV, and more sent directly to your inbox!

📈 Market Update: April 30th, 2024 📊   🌐Propylene: Spot PGP prices settled up to 42.375cpp as of Monday April 29th and we are hearing whispers that PGP will settle down 10cpp for this month. In our March report, we stated that "we expect physical PGP pricing to drop 13-16cpp from the March average price over the April-May time frame." As it stands, the we are currently down 16cpp in the physical spot market and our POV is that we are going to see another sizeable drop in May, potentially down another 8+cpp.   ⚪Polypropylene: BlueClover’s view is that widespec PP pricing will move on 1:1 ratio with PGP from this point forward. So if PGP prices slide lower, we expect PP prices to move lower by the same amount. We've seen good widespec HOPP cars trading in the mid-high 40s depending on specs while the spot PGP market was in the low 40s, so buyers should be aware that they likely won't see pricing in the low 40s on good widespec PP cars until PGP prices retreat even further. The only caveat would be for prime PP materials where we think that there is a greater than 50% chance the producers will get a 2cpp margin expansion between contract PP prices and contract PGP prices over the 2nd quarter 2024. We are excited to see everyone next week at NPE. If you would like to meet up and you have not already reached out to your rep at BlueClover, please do so as our calendars are starting to fill up! Subscribe to our "Brainfood Report" at https://lnkd.in/gP2Mv3Ax and get our full market insights, POV, and more sent directly to your inbox!

📈 Market Update: April 16th, 2024 📊   🌐Propylene: Spot PGP prices settled down to 41.875cpp as of Monday April 15th and at this point in the month, our POV for April/ May PGP pricing is looking as good as Scottie Scheffler looked this past weekend at The Masters. Pricing has come off over 16cpp since March contract settlement in what we believe to be a true correction in the bull market that PGP has been in since June of 2023. At this point in the month, we are estimating that April contract PGP will settle down 10-13cpp with a more modest decrease set for May. The overall supply picture for the supply of PGP has improved as PDHs have come back online and that coupled with a decrease in demand from producers due to planned maintenance has led to further downward pressure on spot pricing.   ⚪Polypropylene: producers continue to hold firm on price expectations for higher valued grades of PP, primarily higher melt & higher izod widespec cars. With a couple of producers down for maintenance and/or under force majeure, producers are just not eager to continue to sell valuable cars at steep losses anymore. Additionally, there have been several PP producers that have announced margin expansions for the coming months for their prime grades. On a more positive note, we are seeing some signs of demand improvement heading into the 2nd quarter of this year with US Durable Goods settling up 1.4% in February. Subscribe to our "Brainfood Report" at https://lnkd.in/gP2Mv3Ax and get our full market insights, POV, and more sent directly to your inbox!

The whole BlueClover team will be at #NPE2024, so make sure you reach out to your Sales Rep to schedule a meeting to disucss #AllThingsPolypropylene! Whether it's virgin/ recycled repro, fixed price risk management, or ARC Certificates, we would love to meet up with you to discuss business and share our thoughts on the market!

The most recent Polymer Points Live hosted by Frank Esposito & Don Loepp from Plastics News highlighted how Polypropylene is "the most volatile commodity resin in North America" and we couldn't agree more. Below you'll find a historical 5-year chart of Polymer Grade Propylene's (PGP) monthly contract settlement prices; as you can see from the chart below, propylene is prone to severe price spikes. The average price change in PGP (either up or down) over any 12-month period during the last 5 years was $0.22/lb which gives propylene a 12-month volatility of 45%. What is the 12-month volatility of the S&P 500?....18%! This means that Propylene (and by extension Polypropylene) is 2.5x more volatile than your 401k account! Does your company want to avoid these price spikes and have more control over your monthly/annual resin spend? BlueClover has the ability to convert your current floating price contract for Polypropylene into a fixed price which can help you avoid the price spikes. Take back your ability to reduce price spike exposure and sell with fixed and known profits with BlueClover's Price Risk Managment Program. Contact your BlueClover sales rep today to learn more!

📈 Market Update: April 2nd, 2024 📊   🌐Propylene: BlueClover was correct and March contract propylene prices settled up $0.03/lb to $0.58/lb last week continuing the 7-month bull market of monomer increases. Despite the increase, it is starting to look like the propylene market is headed for a correction and BlueClover will finally be vindicated on our intuition. Spot monomer settled at $0.44875 as of Monday April 2nd. Supply disruptions have seemed to resolve themselves with PDH's that provide feedstocks to the broader marketplace, but overall inventories are tight. We are expecting contract monomer prices in April/May to fall between 13-16cpp assuming no more supply disruptions.   ⚪Polypropylene: it's too soon to tell how the PGP price drops will impact PP pricing, but it does appear that producers are holding firm on some higher valued grades of PP. Impact COPP is still demanding a premium to monomer pricing, but producers are going on longer runs at lower operating rates so there just isn't much transition/off-spec being made available to the re-sell market. After 9 months of losses, it appears as though producers are back in the drivers seat and are attempting to gain some margin back from the market. If PGP continues to remain in the mid-high 40s (a 13-16cpp retreat) throughout April, we are anticipating only a 5-7cpp reduction in price for PP, and even that still depends on the grade. Subscribe to our "Brainfood Report" at https://lnkd.in/gP2Mv3Ax and get our full market insights, POV, and more sent directly to your inbox!

Happy Easter from all of us at BlueClover! May this day be filled with joy, family, relaxation, and the beauty of spring. Wishing you a wonderful time with loved ones over this coming weekend. 🐰🌷

📈 Market Update: March 19th, 2024 📊   🌐Propylene: Spot propylene prices for March retreated to $0.55/lb on Friday 3/15 but have since picked up a bit of steam settling at $0.575 as of Monday 3/18. Propylene supply issues from PDH outages continues to remain the primary driver of price swings at this point in time. Wile BlueClover is expecting PGP pricing to fall quite a bit over the April-May time period, we underestimated the duration of the PDH outages/ feedstock constraints.   ⚪Polypropylene: while we are expecting a fall in PGP pricing in the coming months, we're also anticipating producers pulling back operating rates reducing the availability of widespec resins to the market (which we've already seen this month). PP producers have been able to command a higher price for PP due to the elevated PGP prices this month. PP buyers who have been waiting months on end for expected price drops and have been running their inventories low do need to buy, and if they need resin by the end of March or even April, they are having to pay higher pricing. Subscribe to our "Brainfood Report" at https://lnkd.in/gP2Mv3Ax and get our full market insights, POV, and more sent directly to your inbox!