Polyurethane Industry: Strictly Control Capacity Expansion, Reduce Environmental Threats

The Polyurethane Industry Association said that as China's economy entered a new normal of structural adjustment and slowdown, the downward pressure on macro-economy in the first half of 2014 was greater. The demand performance of China's MDI downstream was not satisfactory. In the first quarter, aggregate demand for MDI showed negative growth, while the growth of pure MDI demand was only 3%.

Since April, the government has adopted the "micro stimulus" policy to boost the economy. The demand for MDI in the two quarter has improved slightly compared with the first quarter. In the first half of the year, the overall demand growth of MDI was only about 2%.

In the first half of 2014, the main downstream industries such as building insulation, automobiles, white goods, synthetic leather, shoes, textiles and other industries entered a steady development period, and demand slowed down.

The new capacity of two phenyl methylene diisocyanate (MDI) and toluene diisocyanate (TDI), as polyurethane raw materials, will be put into operation in 2014, and will gradually break the balance of supply and demand before 2014.

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On the whole, the price of aggregated MDI has dropped by more than 10% on the basis of the price at the beginning of the year, while the price of pure benzene of the key raw material of MDI has increased by nearly 20% on the basis of the lowest price in the first half of the year, and the profit space of MDI has been greatly reduced.

At present, the domestic MDI manufacturers have the capacity expansion plan, strong willingness to seize the market, but the downstream demand is sluggish, and prices are under pressure.

At the beginning of this year, the price of aggregated MDI fell continuously from 18000 yuan at the beginning of the year to 14000 yuan / ton, which has dropped to MDI production cost. It is at a historical low level. Pure MDI although the overall demand is relatively stable, the price has dropped by about 1500 yuan due to the low confidence in the market.

Meanwhile, prices of MDI raw materials such as pure benzene continued to rise, rising nearly 20% in the first half of this year, approaching 10000 yuan, MDI production costs rose sharply, product prices dropped sharply, and profit margins were seriously squeezed.

Despite the slight stimulation of macroeconomic policies in June, the downward trend in the real estate market continued. The real estate market played a decisive role in the bulk demand such as building insulation, pipeline insulation, refrigerators, furniture and so on in the downstream of MDI. At the same time, the industries such as light spinning, shoemaking, synthetic leather and other industries are facing great difficulties. Some of them are currently under construction at less than 30%. Therefore, the demand for downstream MDI in the second half of the year is still unoptimistic and basically maintained the demand level in the same period last year.

In the second half of this year, the MDI market will also face the new capacity expansion of Bayer Shanghai, 150 thousand tons of new products such as the 600 thousand tons of Wanhua Yantai, and so on, which will cause greater pressure on the market. The situation of China's MDI market will be even more serious in the second half of the year.

The main problems faced by polyurethane industry are analyzed.

The first is the large-scale construction of MDI installations in the Middle East with low price raw materials, which may have an impact on the MDI industry in China. Two, TDI is a highly toxic chemical management, which has a greater impact on the pportation, export and downstream market applications of the products. Three, the market order for building insulation is yet to be standardized.

Experts and enterprises attending the conference suggested that the next step is to strictly control the disorderly expansion of MDI and TDI capacity.

The capacity of polyurethane raw materials has been seriously overloaded: taking MDI as an example, in 2014 and the next few years, a large number of new capacity in China and its surrounding countries have been put into production. China has entered a stage of severe oversupply of MDI, and the new capacity consumption will continue for many years.

Among the polyurethane raw materials, the 1, 4 butanediol (BDO) and adipic acid (AA) industries with more serious capacity overcapacity are much more than the demand. The start-up rate is only three or four at present, and there are still a lot of new capacity being built.

The introduction of backward or immature MDI technology will pose a threat to national security and environmental protection. At present, enterprises represented by HUAWEI are leading MDI large-scale manufacturing technology. After years of technological pformation and innovation, the company has made great progress in energy consumption, production efficiency, integration and comprehensive utilization.

Some enterprises are eyeing the MDI industry, but the existing manufacturers will not pfer technology. Some enterprises are trying to buy backward technology that has been eliminated abroad or some small-scale technology that some engineering companies are immature and not yet industrialized. These technology safety and environmental protection levels are quite different from the current production enterprises.

It is hoped that the state will consider controlling the new capacity approval of MDI, reducing the threat of safety and environmental protection, avoiding similar problems in the BDO and AA industries, and further increasing the oversupply, and promoting the healthy and orderly development of MDI industry.

In addition, the experts also hope to encourage enterprises to "go out" and popularize polyurethane green building materials in the field of building insulation, and standardize and promote the healthy development of polyurethane industry.