Capacity growth is too strong high-end products lack
As an important member of engineering plastics family, polycarbonate is widely used because of its remarkable characteristics such as high transparency, high impact resistance and heat resistance. With the development of social economy, the demand growth of engineering plastics is an inevitable trend. At present, the consumption of polycarbonate in China accounts for more than 40% of the total amount of engineering plastics and plays an important role in the national economy. In the later stage, domestic polycarbonate production capacity will show a blowout growth. Although it can meet the market demand of middle and low-end products, it is likely to lead to the overall overcapacity of the industry, which urgently needs guidance and regulation.
Capacity growth has been excessive
Internationally, the world's polycarbonate production capacity is developing rapidly, reaching about 6 million tons by 2020. At present, the old European and American enterprises represented by Kxtron and Shengxiao, the Japanese enterprises led by Mitsubishi, Dairen and Outlight, as well as The South Korean enterprises such as Rakuten and LG, occupy the leading position in the global market. Since 2010, a large amount of polycarbonate production capacity has been transferred to Northeast Asia, and Asia has become an important polycarbonate production base. Global polycarbonate production capacity is expected to remain on the rise in the next few years.
From the domestic perspective, according to the statistics of ChemChina online, China's polycarbonate production capacity has increased rapidly in the past five years, from about 600,000 tons in 2015 to nearly 1.8 million tons by the end of 2020, with an average annual growth rate of more than 20%. With domestic enterprises investing in new installations, China's polycarbonate production capacity is expected to increase further, and is expected to exceed 4.5 million tons/year by 2025, with the annual growth rate still exceeding 20%. However, the growth rate of domestic polycarbonate demand will be maintained at 3% to 5%, and the domestic demand will exceed 3.3 million tons by 2025, with the growth rate of production capacity much higher than the growth rate of demand.
Lack of high-end products
Although the polycarbonate industry in China has achieved rapid development, it is still in the nurturing stage, and there are still many problems and deficiencies. Among them, the more prominent is the product homogeneity -- on one side is the low-end product capacity release presents the surplus situation; On the other side are high-end products that still rely on imports.
Although the production capacity of domestic polycarbonate has been greatly increased in recent years, the production growth is limited. Therefore, the product self-sufficiency rate has never exceeded 40%, and there is still a gap of 1.3 million to 1.4 million tons to be filled by imports every year. In the stable period of the market, the price of polycarbonate is relatively "flat", and the difference between high-end and low-end is not so obvious. Once the market has a large rise and fall, it will open up a huge gap. In the first nine months of 2020, the price difference between the two in the market is around 3,000 yuan (ton price, the same below); In the fourth quarter, driven by strong demand and rising raw material costs, polycarbonate prices rose significantly. The highest price of the high-end material of Koschuang is over 28,000 yuan, and even the quotation exceeds 30,000 yuan. And domestic low-end material also rose to 22,000 yuan. During the same period, the price of bisphenol A, the raw material for polycarbonate, soared from A peak of 12,000 yuan to nearly 20,000 yuan. Clearly, the lower end of the market is more vulnerable to cost squeeze, the situation is relatively difficult.
Urgent need for normative guidance
In the next few years, China's polycarbonate production capacity will show a spurt of growth, which will drive the rapid development of the industry. Although a large number of redundant construction can meet the market demand of commoditization of middle and low-end products, it is likely to lead to the overall overcapacity of the industry.
In addition, with the continuous advancement of plastic recycling economy, the voice of "plastic prohibition order" is constantly rising, and the sustainable development of polycarbonate industry also faces new challenges.
Insiders suggest that the polycarbonate industry as a whole needs benign guidance and norms to prevent excessive low level and low quality production capacity without delay. At the national level, the development of middle and high-end polycarbonate products should be encouraged to avoid the unfavorable situation of structural shortage of high-end products in the future under the situation of overall overcapacity. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen industry publicity, adopt various measures to deal with plastic pollution, and strengthen policy support to encourage more relevant parties to participate in the process of mechanical and chemical recovery of polycarbonate, so as to take sustainable development as its own responsibility and create a green future for the industry.
From the perspective of enterprises, leading enterprises should take precautions. On the one hand, they should improve the physical recovery capacity of materials and strive to achieve closed-loop; On the other hand, a large amount of technical force and research and development funds have been invested in chemical recycling to solve the problems that are difficult to be solved in physical recycling.
