30 November 2017

PRICE FOCUS

Let’s have a look at nickel and alloy surcharge trend to check together how the markets are moving. The period considered is January 2017 – November 2017.

As you can see, the instability has been high during the year and at present nickel is achieving the highest values of 2017, actually of the last two years. However, this happens after a fall occurring at the beginning of summer, then completely regained from the half of July. We know that raw materials have all been touched by speculation, some of them in an incisive way and others less. Nickel is considered rather “slow” in the commodities scenery, as it has not been so volatile such as copper and zinc. Nevertheless, the increase has been remarkable and it is difficult to forecast the future possible trend. According to some reports, there would be strong increases due to the massive development of the electric car, instead of others that diminish the effects of the big export from Indonesia.

Concerning the polymers, the forecasts among the PP Italian players are steady for December and in general, the activity in the PP market has slowed down this week after that changes in prices trend have been registered: from stable to declining during November due to the weak demand and the good level of stockpile. Instead of in Asia, the rises of futures drive the PP local market higher. It remains to be seen how the oil market will develop in the next months and how this will influence the polymers price. The price of polycarbonate is continuing to rise due to lack of raw material in Europe. This problem is caused by the strong demand for material from the Asian markets, which is absorbing much of the material previously destined for Europe.