After the addition of one million tons of new capacity, China's paraxylene (PX) production capacity stood at 8.26 million tons in 2011.
Around 2 million tons of additional PX capacity is expected to be started in China in 2012, and about 5.5 million tons starting from 2013.
The current domestic PX production is enough to produce around 4.50 million tons of PTA. However, new PTA capacity is expected to surpass 10 million tons in 2012.
This is expected to create a PX supply gap of more than 4.00 million tons in the current year, which can be substituted only by imports.
Experts expect this supply gap to create favourable trends for PX producers.