After the Spring Festival, the epidemic situation delayed the resumption of downstream work, domestic acetic acid spot accumulation, and market prices continued to fall. Although downstream industries have resumed work since March, overall demand is fragmented and volume growth is slow. In addition, the supply of supplies has gradually increased. At present, the price of acetic acid has fallen below the lowest point in 2019.

Industry analysis, although domestic acetic acid demand has grown moderately this year, the growth rate is not as fast as the rapid increase in production capacity, coupled with export restrictions, the domestic acetic acid market is oversupply or unavoidable. Under the situation that the market continues to exceed supply and demand, the short-term acetic acid market is expected to continue its downward trend.

In terms of demand, the downstream industries of acetic acid mainly include PTA, acetate, and vinyl acetate industries. Among them, the PTA industry will increase production capacity by 4.2 million tons per year in 2019, but 3.2 million tons per year will be put into production in December 2019, and the new demand for acetic acid will be clearly reflected this year. Although the production capacity of ethyl acetate has increased slightly in 2019, due to the impact of the increased production capacity of mainstream manufacturers on the surrounding weak enterprises, the output has decreased significantly by 35% year-on-year; the domestic butyl acetate production capacity has remained stable, and the output has increased by 10% year-on-year. The development of other downstream industries is relatively stable, but there is no obvious favorable support for acetic acid demand. In general, the domestic acetic acid market demand has steadily increased in 2019. However, from the perspective of this year, the development of the downstream industry is relatively limited, there are fewer new installations, and whether the new acetic acid production capacity can be absorbed by the market has to be marked with a big question mark.

In terms of exports, China's acetic acid exports in 2019 were 600,000 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 15%. The main exporter was still India, which accounted for more than 60%. According to industry analysts, last year, the international acetic acid plant started operating steadily, the demand for acetic acid in China decreased, and the global downstream acetic acid was too saturated, and the demand did not increase, resulting in a significant reduction in China's acetic acid exports. From this year's perspective, as the epidemic spreads across the globe and economic activities are affected, the market demand for acetic acid will shrink, and further restrictions on exports are a high probability event.