[Usa] Icis: Recycled Pet Suffers In "Narrow" Us Market

An oversupply of PET in the USA and plummeting crude oil prices had a "devastating" effect on pricing in the primary and recycled PET (rPET) markets in 2015, according to an analysis by US Petrochemical specialist ICIS. The midpoint price difference between virgin and rPET pellets fell from 12 cents per lb on the US East Coast in January 2015 to just 3.5 cents by December 2015. "That is a drop of 78% in the difference between the two products," ICIS points out. On the US West Coast, the decrease over the same period was 63% - from 8 cents per lb to 3 cents. Market sources argued that 2016 will likely hold the same narrow scenario for rPET.