Europe Heads Towards Severe PVC Supply Crunch and Price Overshoot with Multiple Plant Shutdowns

The European poly vinyl chloride (PVC) market is undergoing dynamic variations with multiple plant turnarounds lined up in the third and fourth quarters of the running year. The downtime of the production units, mostly for accomplishing fixtures and maintenance work, are a function of both planned and unplanned necessities.

Europe boasts a total installed capacity of 8.7 million tonnes of PVC per annum. With many major production facilities being inoperative at the moment, Europe is witnessing the loss of one-third of its total production volume. For instance, INOVYN, a leading PVC producer in the UK, had to shut down its 320 KTPA polyvinyl chloride and 250 KTPA vinyl chloride monomer plants for an indefinite period, following the supply shortage of feedstock vinyl chloride monomer.

PVC is an economical and high-tensile strength thermoplastic polymer with applications in a variety of daily-used products. The major share of the PVC market is drawn by the pipes and fittings segment. Other applications include its use in the automotive industry, food-packaging sheets, bottles, cables, and non-food packaging. 

As per ChemAnalyst, the heavy set of shutdowns has incurred a huge loss in the capacity and consequently the supplies of poly vinyl chloride in the end-user industries. The acute supply crunch is bound to mount up the prices of poly vinyl chloride in the European region since the surging demand will have to depend on the imported PVC volumes from other countries. The prices are not expected to come down soon as October will continue to witness outages of production plants for maintenance work. Furthermore, the low supplies are also going to hamper the region’s export volumes that will stay low for the remainder of the year.