The PTA output of China has been announced. The September PTA output of the country was about 2.54 million tons, down 0.19 million tons month-on-month. With import volume expected to be 40 KT, China PTA supply may increase by 2.58 million tons.

As for demand, the output of polyester products totaled about 2.84 million tons consuming 2.442 million tons of PTA plus about 90kt of PTA consumed in other application fields as well as 50-60kt of PTA exports, PTA demand totaled about 2.582 million tons. Thus PTA supply and demand was balanced in Sep and PTA inventory kept stable.

As regards to the PTA inventory, futures warehouse inventory nosedived in the end of September but PTA inventory in port and warehouse decreased slowly. Old cargoes reported unsmooth sales while new cargoes gradually piled up. Talking in detail, sales in Zhangjiagang was poor as cargoes were mainly old ones while sales in Nantong was tolerable as Hengli has turnaround plans.

Sales of old cargoes in Jiaxing was good but new cargoes also arrived intensively. Buyers were mainstream plants in the neighboring area. PTA inventory in PTA plants increased in the latter half of September as quite a few plants such as Honggang, FCFC, Hengli and Hanbang resumed production. Till the end of September, PTA inventory in PTA plants was about 50KT higher than the level in the end of August.