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Executives from PET giant Alpek noted severe pressures on their flagship polyester segment, due to global overcapacity and persistently weak demand, during a quarterly earnings call.
“Global oversupply continues to weigh on the industry,” said CEO Jorge Young. “Although recent years have seen the initial progress towards capacity rationalization, further actions will be needed to improve the market balance. In parallel, we expect demand to remain soft.”
He added that “even in China, there is acknowledgement that the markets went to unsustainably low levels.” In fall 2025, Chinese officials met with chemical producers to encourage reduced operating rates and implement production cuts, in particular shutting down older, less efficient assets in the PET value chain. This “anti-involution” initiative aims to reduce excess capacity in the chemical sector.
As the effect of these measures remains to be seen, Alpek is taking a cautious outlook.
“I think the positive thing that we get at this moment is that there is more acknowledgement of the issue,” Young said, adding that “we’re not counting on those [measures] yet to be sustained, on the positive actions on the overcapacity [that] needs to be taken.”
Several countries have imposed anti-dumping measures on some Chinese PET grades – including Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the European Union – and India is conducting a probe. In addition, Mexico and Brazil are conducting anti-dumping probes into bottle-grade PET resin from Vietnam and Malaysia. In most of these cases, Alpek and Thailand’s Indorama Ventures have filed complaints to initiate an investigation.
The US has also had duties on PET imports from China since 2015, effectively cutting off cargoes from mainland China. However, an influx of imported PET – including record levels of RPET imports in 2024 – has driven down commodity pricing, and contributed to the closure of PET recycler rPlanet Earth in California, Alpek in North Carolina, and reduced operations from Phoenix Technologies in Ohio and Alpek in Pennsylvania, despite potential upside from tariff uncertainty.
With the suspension of operations at the Reading plant in Pennsylvania, and shifting RPET volumes to its more efficient plant in Richmond, Indiana, Alpek is focusing on domestic PET markets in the US, Brazil and Mexico, especially higher-margin grades including PET sheet and thermoforms, Young said.
“Recycling continues to be a very important priority for us and for our customers,” he said. “It’s very important for the sustainability of PET packaging.” However, when increasing recycled content, “sometimes that comes with some zigzags.” He pointed to the continuing operation of the Richmond facility, as well as Alpek’s new Single Pellet Technology (SPT), a resin pellet containing up to 25% PCR.
And although Young did not rule out a restart of the Reading site, he did not strike a particularly optimistic tone. “It will also depend on whether we can extract some value from those assets, right? So we will assess for options. So what we chose right now is to suspend the operation, take on the savings, keep supplying our customers from the rest of the assets, that include the other recycling plant, all the avenues we have to deliver recycling content to the customers.”
Alpek reported fourth-quarter volumes of 836,000 metric tons, lower by 10% on the year, due to planned maintenance outages that lasted longer than expected, and worse seasonality amid reduced exports of PET compared to 2024.
