ChemAnalyst

Indonesia’s recent move to curb spot trading of palm oil feedstocks has given room to intense price rise speculations among market participants involved in stearic acid production and trading in China.   Stearic acid prices had last week witnessed an abrupt surge of 8% from last month on account of increased downstream consumption upon optimistic demand growth in the personal care sector amid falling imports due to port suspensions in the wake of tightening Covid restrictions and Chinese New Year around the corner. Now with the implementation of the new Indonesian regime, an inevitable enhancement in the stearic acid prices is expected in China, which is a major importer of stearic acid and its feedstock palm oil from Indonesia. The palm oil market has remained under the spotlight throughout the last year owing to its low output and record-breaking price trends which has kept the trading and downstream dynamics on the edge. Once again, the global palm oil market is seeing itself...

The stearic acid price trend in India took an abrupt turn in the start of August and continued rising unabated throughout the September and the running October month. The sharply rising stearic acid price in the August third-week was recorded to be USD 1209 per tonne after registering a growth of 45% from the July prices. On gaining further hike the price of stearic acid in the September third-week stood at USD 1341 per tonne which further leaped high to a value of USD 1533 per tonne in the October third-week. The stearic acid prices triggered off following the inexorably spiralling palm oil feedstock prices in the past few months on the back of acute shortage of palm oil supplies to the downstream sectors. The palm oil feedstocks in India are primarily imported from Indonesia and Malaysia, which account for over 84% of the total global palm oil production. Since palm oil is produced from the fruits of oil palm trees, its production hugely depends on weather conditions and other far...