Germany's Bayer sees business environment for its plastics business improving thanks to more favourable raw material prices and a pickup in demand, the head of its MaterialScience division said.
"We see prices developing positively," Patrick Thomas told Reuters on Friday on the sidelines of an event.
The MaterialScience unit, which makes padding foam chemicals for furniture, training shoes and transparent plastics, outperformed market expectations in the third quarter, posting a 2.7 percent rise in adjusted core earnings, against analysts' forecasts for a 14 percent drop.
Thomas said especially Asian demand for intermediate products for toluene diisocyanate (TDI), used to make flexible polyurethane foams, was picking up.