15th China's Int'l Chemical Fiber Conference closed

22 Jun '09

4 min read

The 15th China's International Chemical Fiber Conference was held at Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province on Jun 10-12,2009. The theme of the conference is "Financial Crisis and Chemical Fiber Industry". Hundreds of delegates from more than 30 countries took part in, seeking the sustainable development plans for chemical fiber industry.

Gu Chaoying, experts from Information Center of China Chemical Fiber Association in the conference was noted that PTA capacity will continue to grow in 2005-2010. In accordance with "Accelerating Implementation Plan of Large-scale Petrochemical Equipments" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission recently, during the 11th five-year-plan period (2006-2010), the localization rate of China's 600-1000kt/yr PTA plants is targeted to reach above 75%.

At the end of 2005, PTA production capacity has rapidly increased to a total of 6.7 million tons. After the expansion in 2006-2007, the domestic PTA production capacity has reached 12.56 million tons at the end of 2008. China's PTA capacity now accounts for 1 / 3 of Asian total and over 1 / 4 of world total.

The output of polymer amounted to 18.70 million tons in China in 2008, down about 250 kt from 2007, due possibly to the global economic meltdown. These productions consumed technically 16.10 million tons of feedstock PTA, which implied that China still lacked 800kt PTA supply that year. This part of gap was filled mostly by imported materials. Usually, Asian countries, for example Korea and Thailand were the major origin for the products.

According to statistics, the influx of PTA from Asian countries totaled around 5.93 million tons in 2008, accounting for 98% of total imports. Other 20 kt imports were from North America and Europe. Many market analysts forecast an obvious PTA overcapacity in Asia after 2010-2011, which may cause a flow of PTA to other countries and regions of the world.

In China, Zhejiang and Jiangsu consumed the majority of PTA imports in 2008, as the region has the polymer production accounting for more than 70% of national total.

According reports about PTA constructions, China's domestic PTA capacity is expected to reach 16 million tons per year in 2009-2010. After 2011, the capacity may hit fresh peaks, pushing self-supply ratio to more than 80%.

PTA producers that had invested on new plants were encouraged by expanding downstream polyester capacity. In 2008, China started up 11 new continuously polymerization units, with total capacity of 1800kt/yr. China boosted its whole polyester capacity to 24.92 million tons per year, up about 8% from previous year, including 24.05 million tons per year of continuously polymerization and 870kt/yr batch polymerization. Although growth rate slowed down by 1% compared with 2007, absolute new capacity grew similarly to 2007, with 1860kt/yr.

In 2009, it is expected that 6 new polyester units will be on stream, with 1000kt/yr capacity, up about 4% from last year. In 2008-2009, polyester capacity will expand 2800kt/yr. In 2010, China polyester capacity will reach approximately 26 million tons per year. As feedstock PTA capacity has already been very large in China, some companies are willing to invest on upstream materials. In 2009-2011, China will have many new PX capacity on line, but investment fever will colds down greatly after 2012. The market will also tend to be saturated, with increasing supply and fiercer competition.

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