Price Trend

According to the data of business associations, the average price of maleic anhydride offered by the end of the week was 6633.33 yuan/ton (including tax), which was 4.38% lower than that of 6937.50 yuan/ton at the beginning of the week.

On August 9, the maleic anhydride commodity index was 62.49, which was the same as yesterday. It was 49.47% lower than the cyclical peak of 123.67 points (2017-12-26), and 11.25% higher than the lowest point of 56.17 on February 16, 2016. (Note: Period refers to 2011-09-01 to date)

II. Analysis of Influencing Factors

Product: Maleic anhydride market continued to fall this week. This week, most of the major domestic maleic anhydride plants are operating normally, and domestic supply of maleic anhydride is sufficient. Downstream enterprises and traders have low inquiry intentions, mainly to maintain on-demand procurement, and market transactions are general.

Industry Chain: International crude oil fell sharply this week, which has depressed the energy market. The downstream resin factories have low start-up rate and weak market because of environmental protection, high temperature and weak terminal demand. The demand for maleic anhydride is general. Benzene law is still losing money. According to the monitoring of business associations, the impact of low prices from hydrogenated benzene made the pure benzene in East China begin to fall in the second half of the week. Sinopec’s pure benzene enterprises continued to lower the price of pure benzene, and Sinopec continued to bid at a high price of 5350 yuan/ton. The price of n-butane is stable, the market is abundant, and the downstream is still in the off-season.

Industry: According to the price monitoring of business associations, in the 31 st week of 2019 (8.5-8.9), there were 16 commodities rising annually in the chemical sector, of which 2 commodities increased by more than 5%, accounting for 2.4% of the monitored commodities in the sector; the first three commodities were hydrogen peroxide (12.69%), acetic anhydride (10.50%) and butadiene (4.20%). There are 36 kinds of commodities with a decline of more than 5%, accounting for 2.4% of the monitored commodities in this sector. The products with the first three declines are yellow phosphorus (-22.73%), sulfur (-5.81%) and propylene (-4.45%). Average gains and losses this week were -0.41%.

3. Future Market Forecast

Analysts of Maleic Anhydride Products of Business Society Chemical Branch believe that at present, the gap between supply and demand of short-term maleic anhydride still exists, and the pressure of loss in benzene process is high. At present, the downstream resin start-up has not improved significantly, and the short-term adjustment of maleic anhydride market is the main one.