Price Trend

According to the price monitoring of business associations, as of January 10, the average price of methanol in domestic market was 2288 yuan/ton. The overall market area was adjusted, and the price fell 33.70% compared with the same period last year.

II. Market Analysis

Products: China’s methanol market continued to rise. Trading in Northwest China is good and the market is strong. Goods around Bohai Sea and Central China are still good and rising steadily. Trading in Huaihai has improved with a slight increase. Futures are tidied up, and the port market has risen accordingly. Enterprises in Northwest China are still able to deliver goods. Some enterprises have stopped selling, and some of them have delivered more than planned. The mentality of manufacturers is firm. The demand for inventory and replenishment in some parts of the Mainland, together with the recent trend of futures, supports the mindset of the traders, and the overall turnover of the market is stable and the atmosphere is acceptable. On the port side, futures opened high, spot quotation was firm, buying cautiously, negotiation was general, and overall spot volume was flat.

Industry chain: formaldehyde: the weather turned cold, downstream slabs started to decline, the demand for formaldehyde was light; raw material methanol rebounded recently, cost support is still acceptable, Shandong formaldehyde finishing wait-and-see trend. Now Linyi is around 1050-1060 yuan/ton, Zibo and its surrounding areas around 1200-1300 yuan/ton. Acetic acid: The domestic glacial acetic acid market has fallen sharply. The downstream acetate, chloroacetic acid and vinyl acetate are not good, and the intention of pre-season stock is general. The local storage pressure of acetic acid enterprises is slightly obvious, and considering the Spring Festival holidays, the enterprises have a higher intention to arrange goods within a week, so the local real unit price is lower in a day. However, the recent performance of methanol raw material, acetic acid profits continue to compress, so acetic acid is expected to continue downward space is limited. Dimethyl ether: The market supply is still tight, the overall inventory of enterprises is controllable, the short-term mentality is still strong, and the short-term domestic mainstream price trend of dimethyl ether is still bullish.

3. Future Market Forecast

Business Cooperatives Viewpoint: On the positive side, the raw material side: although natural gas in the northern heating season has not been expected to be tense in recent years, the seasonal supply and demand situation from coal, natural gas and other energy sources still has some support; Freight: Freight has been rising continuously in some areas in recent years, coupled with rain and snow weather in some parts of the country, transportation constraints, transportation costs in some areas have increased; Inventory: by the holiday bureau. Due to the tight influence of shipping closure and storage capacity, the overall unloading speed is slower, the inventory of East China Port is reduced, and the arrival of ship cargo in Ningbo area is delayed due to the influence of earlier closure, and the saleable volume is greatly reduced. On the short side, the external market: the recent external market negotiations are still weak and prices remain low, especially in Europe, where prices continue to decline slightly, and the pace of delivery in Iran needs to be paid attention to; demand: the current domestic environmental protection constraints, coupled with the traditional off-season in winter, the downstream industry still shows poor start, the digestion of methanol at the raw material end is normal; supply: recent Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Shanxi Parking and load reduction devices in other places are mostly restored. The supply of methanol resources in some areas has been enlarged, and the supply of methanol in the main production areas has shown an increasing trend. Methanol analysts from business associations predict that crude oil is on a good trend in the near future, and the domestic methanol market is on the strong side in the short term. Later, we still need to pay attention to domestic methanol plant restart, downstream delivery, port inventory, freight situation and futures trend, and suggest cautious operation.

Recently, Bangladesh Export Promotion Bureau released the latest statistics. From July to November 2018, the export volume of plastic products was 487,000 US dollars, an increase of 30% over the same period last year. It exports plastic products to 23 countries, including Britain, Germany, France, Poland, Spain and Canada, including household materials, automobiles, medical equipment and toys.

Bangladesh has about 5,000 plastic factories, and its plastic products market is 20 billion Taka.

The Rare Earth Index (REI) was 346 points on Jan. 8, unchanged from yesterday, down 65.40% from its cyclical peak of 1000 points (2011-12-06) and 27.68% from its lowest point of 271 on September 13, 2015. (Note: Period refers to 2011-12-01 to date).

The average price of neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium in rare earth metals is 399.5 million yuan/ton, 1.655 million yuan/ton and 660,000 yuan/ton respectively. The average price of praseodymium and neodymium oxide in rare earth oxides is 315,500 yuan/ton; dysprosium oxide is 1.21 million yuan/ton; praseodymium oxide is 397,500 yuan/ton; and neodymium oxide is 313,000 yuan/ton. The price of praseodymium and neodymium alloys in rare earth alloys is 405,500 yuan per ton, and the average price of dysprosium and iron alloys is 1.22 million yuan per ton.

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has comprehensively carried out special supervision work on the reorganization of the rare earth industry, which has led to the cold trade in the large domestic rare earth market and the low prices of some commodities in the rare earth market, mainly concentrated in neodymium oxide and neodymium oxide. The price fluctuation of rare earth market is related to environmental protection supervision in the whole country. Rare earth production has its particularity, especially the radiation hazard of some products, which makes environmental protection supervision stricter. Under stringent environmental protection, rare earth separation enterprises in many provinces have stopped production, resulting in a decline in the market of rare earth oxides, making the price of rare earth products firm. Especially for some mainstream rare earth oxides, the supply is tight, and the price trend of some commodities in the rare earth market is stable. However, due to the general situation of production and marketing of some products, the price trend of Pd-Nd oxide products has increased slightly due to the favorable support given by the national policy to the market. In the near future, large enterprise groups will have limited production, rare earth market has improved, but major manufacturers are cautious about the pricing of products. In addition, the recent import of rare earth oxides has been blocked, and the port of Yunnan has banned the import of Myanmar mines, resulting in a decline in import volume, which has brought some favorable support to the rare earth market. However, due to the limited volume, the prices of some rare earth products have declined, but most of the products have temporarily stabilized.

Eight inspecting groups composed of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Natural Resources and other ministries went to various places and launched special inspecting actions against eight provinces and regions of Inner Mongolia, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Sichuan, which are the main producing areas of rare earths. Prior to this, six departments of Jiangxi Province, a major producer of rare earth, jointly issued a special action document on cracking down on rare earth blacks, and conducted special supervision from September 2018 to January 2019. Due to the increasingly obvious regulatory effect, the supply of raw ore resources in the upstream of the rare earth industry has shrunk, and the trading market of the rare earth industry has been cold.

Rare earth analysts of business associations expect that the domestic environmental stringent inspection will not decrease in the near future, and the domestic reorganization of the order of the inhalation industry will have a positive impact on the rare earth industry. However, the import and export of rare earth industry will be limited in the near future. In addition, the recent cold turnover of the rare earth industry, the price trend of the rare earth market is expected to decline steadily.

Chile’s copper industry will double the use of seawater in industrial processes over the next 10 years, Cochilco said on Tuesday. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer in the face of increasing water shortages.

LONDON, Jan. 8 (Reuters) – Aluminum prices fell on Tuesday as bullish speculators continued to put more pressure on them, while other basic metals did not perform well until the end of Sino-US trade negotiations.

Aluminum has performed poorest on the London Metal Exchange (LME) in the past two months because of concerns about oversupply. After the United States announced that it would lift sanctions on Russia’s aluminium industry, concerns about oversupply rose.

“I’ve been quite pessimistic about the aluminium market for some time, and I expect to see further declines in the coming months,” said Ross Strachan, senior macrocommodity analyst at Kaishou.

Aluminum closed down 0.8% at $1,864.50 a tonne in the final open call, reversing some of the gains recorded last week after hitting a minimum of about $1,785.50 a year.

Steven Winberg, a member of the U.S. trade delegation, said Tuesday that trade negotiations between the United States and China would continue on Wednesday. At present, the two largest economies in the world are seeking to resolve their fierce trade disputes.

This uncertainty leads to a weakening of market activity, Strachan said. “I think people are hesitating before we get any information about trade negotiations or the closure of the U.S. government,” he said. The news has been working behind the scenes.

LME copper fell 0.3% to $5,906 a tonne.

Zinc fell 0.5% to $2,485.

Nickel rose 0.4% to $11,190.

Tin rose 1% to $19,940.

Lead rose 0.8% to $1,969.