The Polycarbonate Industry Is Booming. The Non-phosgene Method Is Becoming Mainstream.
Apr 22, 2019
After years of development, China has become the world's largest consumer of polycarbonate. According to statistics, domestic apparent consumption in 2008 reached 1.8 million tons. In terms of production capacity, since 2005, China has set off a boom in polycarbonate construction. World-class producers Teijin, Mitsubishi, Bayer (now Kesi Chuang) have successively invested and built factories in China, which has made China's polycarbonate industry a big one. Improvement. However, polycarbonate technology is highly difficult and there is no mature technology for public transfer. The domestic market is basically monopolized by foreign capital. Until 2015, Ningbo Zhejiang Dafeng Chemical Co., Ltd. used its own non-phosgene technology to build a 100,000-ton/year production plant, and rewrote the history of domestically developed polycarbonate production equipment without 10,000-ton. According to the statistics of chemical online, with the Wanhua Chemical Phase I 70,000 tons/year installation and the Lihuayi 100,000 tons/year installation in the beginning of 2018 and early July respectively, the domestic production capacity has increased to 1.025 million tons by the end of 2018. year. Among them, foreign capital and joint venture capacity account for about 68%, and still have a dominant position.
Although the domestic polycarbonate market has been significantly relieved by the increase in production capacity and output, the self-sufficiency rate has increased significantly, but the current domestic supply capacity is still seriously insufficient. According to statistics, the output in 2018 was more than 700,000 tons. The net import volume in that year was about 1.31 million tons, which has been maintained at more than one million tons for more than ten years. There will still be a large number of capacity-intensive releases in the future to fill this huge supply gap. In 2018, the news about the signing and construction of the project included – Zhongsha (Tianjin) Petrochemical signed a 260,000 tons/year polycarbonate EPC general contract, and Pingmei Shenma Group signed a contract with 800,000 tons of polycarbonate. The trial operation of the second phase of the Luxi Chemical Polycarbonate Project is progressing smoothly, and Xingyun Chemical has signed a 240,000 t/y polycarbonate project. On December 28, 2018, Hainan Huasheng New Materials Technology Co., Ltd. started the 2×260,000 tons/year non-phosgene polycarbonate project (Phase I), adding another piece to the domestic polycarbonate construction boom. Prosperous. In addition, there are still many projects under construction and planning. According to incomplete statistics, more than 2 million tons/year of polycarbonate plants are currently under construction in China, and even more capacity is in the research stage, and will be gathered in the next few years. The concentrated release period of carbonate capacity.
These new capacity have two notable features. First of all, the investment subject "hundred flowers". In addition to the total capacity of Covestro and Zhongsha (Tianjin) Petrochemical's new projects of 460,000 tons / year, the rest are invested by domestic enterprises, so the influence of foreign capital and joint venture capacity will gradually decline. Second, non-phosgene processes are becoming mainstream. With the maturity of process technology and increasing emphasis on environmental issues, future polycarbonate production capacity is increasingly using non-toxic non-phosgene transesterification processes. According to statistics, the capacity of non-phosgene process in new installations exceeds one million tons, accounting for more than half of the total, and is gradually becoming the mainstream development direction in the industry.
With the launch of new plants, it is expected that domestic production capacity will exceed 3 million tons per year by 2022, which will become the world's largest polycarbonate producer.
The “spurt” growth of polycarbonate production capacity can further increase the self-sufficiency rate and meet the domestic market demand, but on the other hand, it will also generate new problems, the unequal capacity growth rate and demand growth rate, and a large amount of homogenization. Project construction may lead to overcapacity in the industry as a whole. The price of polycarbonate continued to fall in 2018, which cast a shadow over the industry outlook. Although the collapse of raw material costs and downstream weakness are the main reasons for the decline in the polycarbonate industry, the impact of a large number of new capacity on the market is also a factor that cannot be ignored. Taking the profit of 100,000 tons/year project as an example, since the start of the vehicle at the end of June 2018, four production lines have been fully loaded and operated, and their product quality, mechanical properties and thermal performance have reached the domestic leading level, but they have caught up. During the downturn in the polycarbonate market, its profit margins were severely squeezed.
In May 2018, the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation issued an early warning report on the production capacity of key petrochemical products. The report pointed out that domestic polycarbonate projects were concentrated in construction, and the growth of downstream electronic appliances and building panels was slow. Traditional optical discs were affected by new modes of transmission, and the demand for polycarbonate continued to shrink. Therefore, the polycarbonate industry needs to beware of overcapacity.
