On November 6, 2025, Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto inaugurated a naphtha cracker that will produce 1 million tons of ethylene and 520,000 tons of propylene. These will reduce Indonesia’s imports of monomers, polymers, and other petrochemicals.

Like India and other large importers in Asia-Pacific, Indonesia seeks to reduce imports of key petrochemicals. A big step in that direction has been taken with startup of South Korea’s Lotte Chemical facility in Cilegon. This facility is projected to reduce ethylene monomer imports by 90% (which totaled 487,000 tons through September 2025 YTD). Also to decline are propylene monomer imports, 200,000 tons through September.

Indonesia’s import volumes of polyolefins are much larger than those of monomers and will also drop.

Imports of polyethylene (all grades) were 1.1 million tons through September 2025 YTD, down 5% from September 2024 YTD. Asia-Pacific sources, mainly Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Korea, accounted for three-quarters of the total.

Imports of polypropylene (all grades) were 1.0 million tons September 2025 YTD, down 9%. Asia-Pacific sources – mainly Singapore, Thailand, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Korea – accounted for over 90% of the total.

From International Trader Publications’ World Trade Analyses on all grades of Polyethylene and Polypropylene, based on latest statistics from all available countries.