Houston — Brazilian styrene and polystyrene producer Innova was heard to be facing production issues amid talk of a possible outage, multiple sources said this week.

Details and confirmation of the outage were not immediately available. Innova has an estimated styrene capacity of 388,000 mt at its plant, located in Triunfo, Rio Grande do Sul.

Talk of a possible production issue began to emerge early in the week when trading sources reported styrene deals done at $920/mt FOB into Brazil. Several sources talked of a possible outage Thursday, leading to higher US buy interest. Multiple styrene trades were done with the last heard traded value at $930/mt FOB USG, market participants said. Sources estimated that 18,000-20,000 mt was loaded, destined for Brazil.

Looking ahead, styrene prices in the US are expected to see some support from expected stronger pricing in Europe headed into the fourth quarter. Several European styrene producers are poised to go into maintenance during the latter half of Q3 and Q4, with lower supply and higher prices as a result, sources said.

In pricing, prompt spot US styrene prices were last assessed at $930/mt FOB USG. Upstream spot benzene prices appeared strong amid expectations of tightness, and prompt benzene on a DDP USG basis was last heard traded at 256 cents/gal ($766/mt). The prompt spot styrene-benzene spread was last estimated at near $164/mt.

-- Kevin Allen, kevin.allen@spglobal.com

-- Edited by Zac Aiuppa, newsdesk@spglobal.com