Borealis: The prospect of polyolefin business this year is promising

Recently, Borealis executives said that compared with the same period last year, the profitability of the polyolefin business will be weak in the first half of 2023, but the outlook for the full year of 2023 is still positive.

Borealis believes that although the market is still characterized by inflationary pressures and weak demand growth expectations, the downturn from the fourth quarter of 2022 is temporary. Borealis CEO Thomas Ganll said: "Looking back at 2022, our first half profit was very impressive, but I don't think this will happen again anytime soon. We are in a cyclical industry and we expected a downturn earlier. ...to my surprise, the magnitude and length of the downturn was not as severe or as long as we had previously thought. It is reasonable for this industry, the market may be more positive than we thought."

Mark Tunkens, Borealis Chief Financial Officer, added: "We will not see any improvement compared to last year. Profitability in the polyolefins business started to weaken in the fourth quarter of last year, and we expect a profit in the first quarter of this year. The situation will be the same as in the fourth quarter of last year, although sales volumes may improve. We are more optimistic about the market conditions later in the year, and there are some signals that sales volumes should improve. Another one that may damage the performance of the company's polyolefin business in 2023 The most important factor is capacity utilization, Borealis’ polyolefin units in Schwechat, Austria and Porvoo, Finland are scheduled to be shut down for maintenance in the second and third quarters of this year, respectively.”