4.15 Soda Ash Daily Review: Individual prices in the soda ash market fluctuated within a narrow range

Soda ash market analysis

Today, the domestic soda ash market in East China and Northeast China has adjusted slightly, with an adjustment range of 20-30 yuan/ton. As of now, the price of light soda ash in Central China is 1250-1380 yuan/ton, and the price of heavy soda ash is 1300-1450 yuan/ton; the price of light soda ash in Northeast China is 1450-1600 yuan/ton, and the price of heavy soda ash is 1480-1600 yuan/ton. Today, the overall operating rate of the domestic soda ash market remains at around 90%, and the market supply remains abundant. However, affected by the weak recovery of terminal demand, the speed of enterprise destocking is relatively slow, and the procurement strategy of downstream enterprises generally tends to be conservative, mainly focusing on small orders to replenish inventory, and large orders are less traded.

Futures dynamics

According to Boduoduo data: On April 15, the opening price of the main soda ash contract SA2505 was 1339 yuan/ton, and finally closed at 1331 yuan/ton, with a daily increase of -0.3%. The intraday high was 1,340 yuan/ton, the low was 1,319 yuan/ton, and the total position was 487,943 lots, down 83,863 lots from the previous month.

Today, the price of soda ash futures continued to fluctuate weakly, with the main force shifting positions and changing months. From a fundamental perspective, the previous maintenance units have resumed production one after another, and the overall industry operating rate has risen to more than 90%. The expectation of loose supply has a strong pressure on prices. The demand side still has a certain scale of support, but it is difficult to form a concentrated repair drive in a short time, and the pressure on mid- and upper-stream inventory still exists. In the short term, the weak logic of soda ash itself has not seen obvious signs of improvement. The near-month futures price fluctuates mainly around the spot delivery cost range. In the future, we can expect to play the downstream holiday stocking and macro policy expectations around the end of the month, and then observe whether the demand side can show substantial improvement.

Forecast for the future market

From the perspective of the short-term market trend, the soda ash market may maintain a stable and weak pattern. In the current situation where downstream demand has not recovered significantly, the market price lacks strong support. It is expected that the soda ash market will be narrowly consolidated in the short term, and attention should still be paid to the subsequent device dynamics and changes in the downstream procurement rhythm.