Skyrocketing n-Hexane Price in the Netherlands

Rotterdam, Netherlands: The n-Hexane market in the Netherlands continued to experience bullish market dynamics, and the price trend-maintained buoyancy over the last few months. Despite the strong market, domestic traders were almost in a loss-making state due to weaker unit margins from elevated upstream Crude oil pricing and production costs compensated by higher consumption across the domestic market.

The key Netherlands-based manufacturer, Shell Plc., has reported that its overall production has dropped by 4 percent due to maintenance activities, particularly at Pearl GTL and Prelude FLNG. Also, both refineries and chemicals manufacturing plants in Q2 2022 were impacted by scheduled turnarounds and maintenance across the world. Moreover, European inflation is hitting new records with the unstoppable escalation of energy costs.

As per our insights, trading and optimization are significantly increasing with slight ease in supply chain disruptions. However, due to seasonality, the manufacturing companies in Europe witnessed increased enquiries for their n-Hexane product lines from the downstream oil extraction industry. Also, the solvent’s demand as a degreaser inclined in various downstream industries.

Consequently, the supplies of n-Hexane further tightened across the regional market amidst robust seasonal demand, which aided in further price rise. According to the ChemAnalyst Database, the n-Hexane price settled high after an inclination of approximately 1.1 percent this week.

As per ChemAnalyst, “The n-Hexane is expected to witness market optimism in the coming weeks, and the solvent price is likely to remain sky-high in the Netherlands. The solvent market players are expected to remain under pressure with highly fluctuating Crude oil on the back of continuing the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, soaring energy costs in Europe, increasing fuel demand in the United States, and easing Covid restrictions in China. All the factors mentioned above collectively contribute to the inclining price trend of most of the Crude derivative solvents, particularly n-Hexane in the Netherlands.”