Chinese anti-dumping duties on Taiwanese styrene monomer exports would have a limited impact on business, since the global market remains undersupplied, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台化) said yesterday.
The duties are forecast to help lift styrene monomer prices in China, the company said, adding that uptrends in the prices of its benchmark products such as polystyrene and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) could also offset the impact of the duties.
Formosa Chemicals’ styrene monomer exports to China are mostly used by its Chinese subsidiaries to manufacture polystyrene and ABS products, according to one of its filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange
The company’s two units in Ningbo, China, are capable of producing 200,000 tonnes of polystyrene and 450,000 tonnes of ABS resins per year, data showed.
China yesterday said it was levying anti-dumping measures on styrene monomer imports from Taiwan, South Korea and the US, with importers having to pay deposits of 5 to 10.7 percent pending completion of an investigation, which is scheduled for the end of June although it could be expanded.
Taiwanese importers will have to pay deposits of 5 percent.
Taiwan shipped 458,954 tonnes of styrene monomer worth US$470 million to China in 2016, accounting for a 13.12 share market share, placing third after South Korea (35.03 percent) and Saudi Arabia (14.66 percent), Chinese trade data showed.
Taiwan Styrene Monomer Corp (台灣苯乙烯) and Grand Pacific Petrochemical Corp (國喬石化) are Taiwan’s other major styrene monomer producers.
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last