MOSCOW: Russian companies increased their consumption of imported polystyrene (PS) in the first 10 months of 2016 by 10% year on year, with overall imports of PS and styrene plastics totalling 96,800 tonnes, according to MRC’s DataScope report.
The acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) market remained the largest import market. Total ABS imports rose by 5% in January-October 2016 to 25,400 tonnes, with South Korea accounting for most ABS shipments. Overall imports totalled 15,200 tonnes. Belgium, Spain and Taiwan are also major ABS suppliers. General purpose polystyrene (GPPS) accounted for the greatest increase in imports. GPPS shipments grew from 12,000 tonnes in January-October 2015 to 22,800 tonnes in the same period of 2016. Material from South Korea, Italy, Belgium and China was actively imported to the Russian market.
Deliveries of high impact polystyrene (HIPS) grades, import volumes of which were 16,950 tonnes in January-October 2016 (versus 16,800 tonnes over the same period a year earlier), remained stable. At the same time, imports of expandable polystyrene (EPS) fell by 18% over the stated period to 18,600 tonnes. Shipments of Finnish, Korean and German EPS decreased, while mports from China increased slightly (from 6,600 tonnes in January-October 2015 to 6,800 tonnes over the same period of 2016).
