Silicone

DMC price continued declining this week. Due to the sluggish demand for DMC, some of the silicone monomer producers who had 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 remained, although the silicone monomer manufacturers implemented the overhaul or reduced operating rate. The silicone price is expected to stay relatively low in the short term.

Fumed silica

This week, the domestic fumed silica market was still stable. The firms stabilized the fumed silica price. In respect of upstream raw materials, the price of monomethyltrichlorosilane (MTCS) was falling while that of silicon tetrachloride (STC) was in stability. The demand of fumed silica was still sluggish this week, and customers bought it only on rigid demand. The fumed silica market represented oversupply. In the short period, the fumed silica market will stay relatively weak.

Silicon metal

This week, the domestic price of silicon metal continued to decline. As the demand of silicon metal remained sluggish, the inventory was overall high, in the meantime, the price of futures goods market dropped much to make the manufacturers sell silicon metal in haste, some of which even bettered their transactions by lowering the selling price. The price of raw materials was down within some limits, the overall profits fell constantly. The producers in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces reduced their operating rate amid the high production cost, and tended to resume production during the rain season. In the short period, the players showed pessimism over the silicon metal market. It is expected that the price of silicon metal will be stable in the next week.

Polysilicon 

This week saw the stability in silicon chips price. Due to the relatively short supply of the silicon chips in April throughout, N-type silicone chips stabilized in selling aspect. The demand for N-type batteries turned to grow slowly, but the shipment of components began to increase. On the battery side, as the manufacturers obtained low profit margins from P-type batteries, they had to reduce production and sale. Besides, there were some problems with the debugging onto the N-type battery production line, resulting in a slowdown in the demand for polysilicon. When it comes to the components, the current mainstream order price ranges between RMB 17,000/w-17,500/w. However, as the second quarter of 2023 starts with the domestic and foreign production lines come on stream, the demand of the relative components will gradually increase.