Silicone

This week, DMC price kept falling. As terminal customers still had sluggish demand for DMC, some of the silicone monomer producers who experienced relatively high inventory had to lower selling price. The downstream players turned to increase the DMC replenishment to some extent. The price of silicon metal continued to fall. The prices of methyl chloride and methanol dropped. The production cost of DMC reduced. The prices of OH polymer, gum and HCR all fell. The imbalance between the supply and demand of DMC may ease as the silicone monomer manufacturers plan to overhaul or reduce operating rate in the near future. The silicone price is expected to stay relatively low in the short term.

Fumed silica

This week, the domestic fumed silica market was stable. Some firms slightly reduced the fumed silica price. In respect of upstream raw materials, the price of monomethyltrichlorosilane (MTCS) was basically stable and that of silicon tetrachloride (STC) went down. The demand of fumed silica was still sluggish, customers bought it only on rigid demand. The fumed silica market presented oversupply. In the short period, the fumed silica market will stay relatively weak.

Silicon metal

The domestic price of silicon metal fell slightly this week. In southwest China, the production cost of most silicon metal producers was rather high, an increasing number of firms stopped production for maintenance, with the operating rate of around 20%-25%. The supply of silicon metal decreased in southwest China. However, in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia regions, new production capacity was released. As the downstream silicone and aluminium alloy players had weak demand for silicon metal, the domestic supply of silicon metal outpassed demand, inventory of silicon metal was increasing. In addition, the approaching rain season is expected to cause the power price in the southwest China to decline by RMB 0.1-0.2/kW, which contributed to the falling price of silicon metal.

Polysilicon 

This week, the price of polysilicon continuously fell in a slow manner with not too much transaction. The main reasons are as follows: On the one hand, there was sufficient inventory of polysilicon kept by the downstream silicon chips producers. Considering the decreasing trend of polysilicon price, the silicon chips firms were unwilling to purchase polysilicon like the regular basis, they experienced waiting to see in the short term; On the other, polysilicon producers ran out of polysilicon inventory and those producers were manufacturing the products as ordered. There were just several firms who had signed the new orders of April in a small number.