国内尼龙66发展空间巨大
Time:
2024-11-12
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Recently, the US-China trade war has become a focal point of public opinion. The US has imposed retaliatory tariffs on more than 1,300 of our products worth about $50 billion. In response, China has increased tariffs by 25% on 106 items across 14 categories, including soybeans, automobiles, and chemicals from the US, which has suddenly brought PA66 into the spotlight.
PA66 is produced by the reaction of adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine, which is generated from the hydrogenation of adiponitrile. As an important raw material for PA66, the production technology of adiponitrile is currently controlled by companies such as Invista and Ascend, with Invista almost monopolizing the global production and trade of adiponitrile. Currently, our country has no production capacity for adiponitrile and relies entirely on imports. In contrast, another chemical product used to synthesize PA66, adipic acid, is in oversupply domestically. According to statistics from Chemical Online, the annual production capacity of adipic acid in China was about 2.3 million tons in 2017, with an output of only about 1.3 million tons, resulting in an operating rate of less than 60%. The overall supply surplus of adipic acid in the domestic market is quite evident, with more companies choosing to export. The export volume in 2017 was 344,000 tons, an increase of 18.6% year-on-year. It can be said that the current development of PA66 in our country is constrained by the raw material adiponitrile.
Globally, the annual production capacity of PA66 outside of China is about 3 million tons, with Invista accounting for about 70% of that capacity. The remainder is mainly concentrated in a few companies such as Ascend, Solvay, DuPont, BASF, and Asahi Kasei. In 2017, the annual production capacity of PA66 in China was about 540,000 tons, including Invista's 150,000 tons in Shanghai. Apart from Henan Shenma, Liaoyang Xingjia Chemical, and Anshan Guorui in Liaoning, which have supporting production facilities for hexamethylenediamine, Zhejiang Huafeng and Jiangsu Huayang need to source hexamethylenediamine externally to produce PA66.
From the perspective of imports, PA66 is a product with a high degree of import dependence. According to customs statistics, our country imports nearly 300,000 tons of PA66 each year, accounting for more than half of our consumption. Looking at the import situation over the past three years, the US is a major importing country, with an annual import volume of about 50,000 tons, accounting for about 17%. Countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Canada, and Japan also rank among the top sources of imports, with import volumes each accounting for around 10%. This indicates that the sources of PA66 imports in our country are quite diversified. If this "trade war" escalates, our imports of PA66 can also be replaced by other countries, which would not significantly impact downstream demand.
From the perspective of downstream demand, with the rapid development of our economy, the demand for PA66 is growing rapidly. PA66 is mainly used in engineering plastics and fibers, with engineering plastics primarily used in the automotive, electrical, mechanical, and cable tie industries, while fibers are used in applications such as curtain fabrics and airbag fabrics. With the continuous development of our automotive industry, our country has gradually become one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world. Under the trends of lightweighting and environmental energy-saving, the automotive industry's demand for PA66 is also showing a continuous upward trend, leading to an increasing supply-demand gap for PA66.
In summary, under the circumstances of high import dependence and an increasing supply-demand gap, there is significant room for the development of the PA66 industry in our country. The domestic PA66 industry should seize the opportunity presented by this "trade war" to accelerate breakthroughs in adiponitrile technology, break the foreign technology monopoly, and the domestic PA66 industry will usher in a spring of development.
Real-time information
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2024-09-26