Introduction
The new material industry in mainland China is in the transition stage from self-sufficiency in low-end products to independent research and development and import substitution of high-end products; domestic high-end new material technology and production are weak, although the production capacity has been significantly increased in recent years, but it has failed to meet the domestic demand for high-end products, and the road to becoming a material power has a long way to go.
➢ One of the directions of new materials - lightweight materials. ➢ New Materials Direction 2 - Aerospace Materials.
➢ The third direction of new materials - semiconductor materials. It is the main raw material for semiconductor devices and solar cells. Most of the silicon wafer production capacity for photovoltaic is concentrated in the mainland, and the production technology level is leading in the world. The manufacturing process of semiconductor silicon wafers is more complex, and some domestic companies are trying to break down technical barriers. In recent years, the material has been continuously penetrated in the fields of electric vehicles, photovoltaics, smart grids, etc., and has strong downstream demand. It is one of the core materials of integrated circuits, and the compound growth rate of the global target market size from 2013 to 2020 is 14%.
➢ The fourth direction of new materials - new plastics. It is subject to the technical barriers of foreign enterprises for raw material production technology. Under the background of "carbon neutrality" and "plastic instead of steel" policies, the domestic substitution of this material is of great significance to the development and progress of the mainland's new energy industry, electronic communications, transportation and other fields. It is a special engineering plastic with excellent physical and chemical properties, which has made an important contribution to the lightweight of automobiles and the prevention and control of air pollution. Because of its excellent mechanical and environmental protection characteristics, it is widely used in many fields such as medical equipment and 3D printing, but it is highly dependent on imports.
➢ The fifth direction of new materials - new materials for electronic and electrical capacitors. It is the key to the manufacture of thick film resistors and other electronic components, and is widely used in photovoltaic, aviation, military and other fields. It can be widely used in communications, industry, automobiles and other fields, among which MLCC, as the electronic ceramic with the largest output and demand, matches the development trend of the electronic components market and the national policy guidance.
➢ New material direction 6 - multi-purpose new materials. It is widely used in electrical machinery, IT, automobiles, military industry, etc., and the global market demand and consumption of modified polyphenylene ether are increasing year by year. The degree of industrial concentration is relatively high, and the current self-sufficiency rate of domestic para-aramid production capacity is about 20%, and the dependence on imports is serious. Superabsorbent resins (SAP) are characterized by good water absorption, affordability, and safety, and the global demand for SAP is expected to grow to 4.4 million tons by 2025. With the aging trend of the domestic population and the liberalization of education policies, the size of China's SAP market is expected to reach 14.51 billion yuan in 2023.
➢ New Materials Direction No. 7 - Optical and Electronic Chemicals. Widely used in electronic display, construction, automobiles, new energy, etc., the mainland has achieved domestic substitution in the field of low-end optical films. In the field of high-end optical films, mainland enterprises are seeking technological breakthroughs and industrial upgrading through endogenous and epitaxial methods. It is a cutting-edge material used in semiconductor manufacturing, PCB, and panel industries. At present, the proportion of photoresist localization in the mainland is very low, and high-end semiconductor photoresist is basically completely dependent on imports, and breaking through the overseas technology monopoly of photoresist has become a key link in the frontier research of mainland science and technology. It is a representative of the world's new generation of display technology, and is expected to become a mainstream display technology in the field of mobile phone panels. Mainland manufacturers are actively expanding production in the OLED panel industry, and the production capacity will grow rapidly in the future, and the potential demand for localized OLED materials is strong. In the field of high-value luminescent material products, the mainland has initially achieved domestic substitution, and some subdivided products have been supplied to domestic panel manufacturers in large quantities, but there is still a gap between technology and production capacity and the international leading level, and there is still a lot of room for enhancement in international competitiveness.
Continued from above
4
The third direction of new materials - semiconductor materials
1. Silicon wafers
Silicon wafers are located in the upstream of the semiconductor industry chain and are the main raw materials for semiconductor devices and solar cells, mainly used in photovoltaic and semiconductor fields, and the downstream demand has been growing in recent years. Compared with photovoltaic silicon wafers, the production process of semiconductor silicon wafers is more complex, there are more application scenarios, and the market value is higher, but the semiconductor silicon wafer industry in the mainland started late, the development level is relatively backward, and the global market is monopolized by Japanese manufacturers, and the market is mainstream 12-inch silicon wafers have not yet reached large-scale production in the mainland, and they are heavily dependent on imports, and domestic enterprises represented by the Shanghai silicon industry are working hard to break down technical barriers, and there is a broad space for domestic substitution.
Silicon is a good semiconductor material with high temperature resistance and radiation resistance, which is especially suitable for making high-power devices. Silicon wafers are formed by pulling single crystals into silicon rods and then cutting. Silicon wafers are mainly used in semiconductors and photovoltaics, semiconductor silicon wafers have higher requirements than photovoltaic wafers in terms of crystal, shape, size, purity, etc., the purity of photovoltaic silicon wafers requires silicon content between 4N-6N (99.99%-99.9999%), and semiconductor silicon wafers are about 9N-11N (99.9999999%-99.9999999999%), the manufacturing process is more complex, and the downstream applications are more extensive. Silicon wafers for semiconductors are located in the upstream of the industrial chain, mainly used in integrated circuits, discrete devices and sensors, and are the key materials for manufacturing chips, affecting the development of automobiles, computers and other industries further downstream, and are the cornerstone of the semiconductor industry chain.
According to the CPIA's forecast, the annual installed capacity of the global photovoltaic market will reach 150GW in 2021, with broad market and development prospects. As of the end of 2019, the continent's monocrystalline wafer production capacity was 115GW, accounting for 97.6% of the world's total, according to the Silicon Branch of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association. Leading enterprises LONGi and Zhonghuan occupy more than 50% of the domestic monocrystalline silicon wafer market share, and in the process of continuous expansion of production capacity, new power companies such as Shangji CNC and Jingyuntong are also accelerating their expansion. According to the statistics of the company's communiqué, the monocrystalline silicon wafer production capacity in China was about 190GW in 2020, and it is expected that the domestic monocrystalline silicon wafer production capacity will reach 240GW by the end of 2021.
Benefiting from the technological progress of semiconductor products and the increase in the category of downstream related consumer electronics, the demand for semiconductor silicon wafers is increasing year by year, and the scale is growing, with global semiconductor silicon wafer shipments reaching 1.241 billion square inches in 2020, according to Gartner's forecast, the global silicon wafer market will reach about $11 billion in 2020, and the semiconductor silicon wafer market has broad prospects.
Due to the high technical barriers of the semiconductor silicon wafer industry, the global semiconductor silicon wafer industry is monopolized by giants today, with a high degree of concentration, and the manufacturers in Chinese mainland are small. In 2020, the world's top five silicon wafer suppliers (Shin-Etsu) of Japan, SUMCO of Japan, GlobalWafers (Taiwan), Silitronic (Germany), and SKSiltron (South Korea) accounted for more than 80% of the total market share, and the market share of Shanghai Silicon Industry, a local manufacturer in mainland China, was about 2.2%, which is a small volume.
The larger the wafer size, the higher the productivity per wafer. Since the 70s of the 20th century, silicon wafers have been moving towards large sizes, and today the world's largest mass-produced wafer is 300mm, or 12-inch wafers. The demand for 12-inch wafers has been on the rise in recent years, and according to Japan's Secco, 12-inch wafers are forecast to reach a CAGR of 5.1% from 2020 to 2024. The world's semiconductor wafer production capacity is mainly concentrated in the industry giants, the mainland semiconductor wafer started late, the development is relatively backward, only a few companies have the production capacity of 200mm (8 inches) silicon wafers, and the mainland's 12-inch silicon wafers are all dependent on imports before 2017.
The production of large silicon wafers has high requirements for the purity of silicon, and also has very high requirements for chamfering and precision grinding processing technology, and the technological level of the mainland is backward, and the large-scale production of 12-inch silicon wafers has not yet been realized. In 2018, the Shanghai silicon industry achieved large-scale sales of 12-inch silicon wafers, breaking the situation of zero domestic production rate of large-size silicon wafers. 12-inch wafers are still the mainstream of today's wafer market, and domestic manufacturers have the opportunity to catch up, and there is still a lot of room for domestic substitution of large-size wafers.
In order to promote the localization of semiconductor silicon wafers, an important material, the mainland government has also issued a series of policies to support the development of the industry, promote the R&D and manufacturing of large-size silicon wafers, and promote the development of the semiconductor industry.
Domestic silicon wafer production companies cover a wide range of businesses, and photovoltaic and semiconductor wafer businesses are often involved. The leading enterprises of photovoltaic silicon wafers, Zhonghuan and LONGi, have strong strength and a solid leading position, and the domestic manufacturers of semiconductor silicon wafers are catching up at an accelerated pace, and the Shanghai silicon industry is taking the lead in the field of 12-inch silicon wafers, in addition to Zhonghuan, Lion Micro, Super Silicon Semiconductor and other enterprises have also entered the field of large silicon wafers. China is the world's largest semiconductor terminal market, and with the continuous expansion of China's chip production capacity, the market size of semiconductor silicon wafers in mainland China will accelerate growth, and the development prospects of large silicon wafers are broad.
2. Silicon carbide (SiC)
Silicon carbide is the third generation of semiconductor materials, with very superior performance, is an important raw material for power devices, in recent years countries have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to develop related industries. The threshold of the silicon carbide industry is relatively high, the production technology level of the mainland is relatively backward, and the current industrial pattern is dominated by the United States, and Cree alone occupies 62% of the global share of conductive silicon carbide wafers. The silicon carbide market has broad development prospects, and in recent years, it has continued to penetrate in the fields of electric vehicles, photovoltaics, rail transit, smart grids, etc., with strong downstream demand and expanding market scale. The mainland is also laying out the whole silicon carbide industry chain, the number of related patents has been rising this year, and the market share of wafer manufacturers represented by Tianke Heda is also increasing year by year, and the future development space of the silicon carbide industry in the mainland is large.
Silicon carbide is currently the most mature wide bandgap semiconductor material, and it is also the representative material of the third generation of semiconductor materials. Silicon carbide materials have many advantages: stable chemical properties, high thermal conductivity, low coefficient of thermal expansion, wear resistance and high pressure resistance. Products using silicon carbide materials, compared with products with the same electrical parameters, can reduce the volume by 50% and reduce energy loss by 80%, due to these characteristics, countries around the world attach great importance to silicon carbide materials, and have invested a lot of energy to promote the development of related industries, and the major semiconductor giants in the world have also invested heavily in the development of silicon carbide devices. With the maturity of technology and the decline of preparation costs, the penetration rate of silicon carbide power devices in the field of new energy vehicles has continued to rise in recent years, and it is an important raw material for SiC and GaN devices in the field of new energy and 5G communication in the future.
The silicon carbide production process is divided into three steps: single crystal growth, epitaxial layer growth and device manufacturing, which correspond to the three major links of the industrial chain substrate, epitaxy, devices and modules. The United States, Europe, Japan and other countries and regions have continuously improved the preparation technology of silicon carbide single crystal, R&D and manufacturing related equipment for many years, and have great advantages in all aspects of the silicon carbide industry chain. Industry giant CREE has strong strength, its subsidiary Wolfspeed has vertically integrated production capacity and has a leading position in the power and RF device market, and European companies such as Infineon and STMicroelectronics have a complete silicon carbide production and application industry chain. Japan's ROHM Semiconductor, Mitsubishi Electric, etc. are leading in the development of silicon carbide power modules; in recent years, foundry enterprises are also increasing, and enterprises in mainland China and Taiwan have gradually entered, including San'an Integration in mainland China and Hanlei Technology in Taiwan.
At present, the pattern of silicon carbide industry presents the characteristics of the United States. Taking conductive silicon carbide wafers, an important product, as an example, the United States accounted for more than 70% of global production in 2018, and CREE alone accounted for 62% of the market share, with most of the remaining share occupied by other companies in Japan and Europe, and only 1.7% of Chinese companies.
Silicon carbide is an ideal material for extreme power devices, with high temperature and high pressure resistance, high energy conversion efficiency, and a wide range of applications. At present, there are four main application scenarios of silicon carbide power devices: 1) new energy vehicles: main inverters in motor drive systems, 2) photovoltaics: photovoltaic inverters, 3) rail transit: power semiconductor devices, 4) smart grids: solid-state transformers, flexible AC transmission, flexible DC transmission, high-voltage DC transmission and distribution systems. With the further development of silicon carbide power devices, its penetration rate in various fields continues to increase, according to Yole, the global automotive SiC power device market space is expected to reach 1.93 billion US dollars by 2024, corresponding to a compound growth rate of 29% from 2018 to 2024. According to the forecast of Tianke Heda's prospectus, the proportion of silicon carbide power devices in photovoltaic inverters will reach 50% in 2025, and the proportion of silicon carbide devices in rail transit will also gradually increase.
Driven by the demand for electric vehicles and photovoltaic inverters, according to Omdia's forecast, the emerging market of silicon carbide and gallium nitride power semiconductors is expected to exceed $1 billion in 2021, and according to IHS Markit data, the market size of silicon carbide power devices in 2018 was about 390 million US dollars, benefiting from the growth of demand for new energy vehicles and the development of the photovoltaic industry, the market size of silicon carbide power devices is expected to exceed $10 billion by 2027, and the growth momentum of the silicon carbide industry is sufficient.
The mainland is the largest application market for silicon carbide, but at present, the silicon carbide industry in the mainland is still very imperfect, and most of the domestic research institutes and universities engaged in the R&D and manufacturing of silicon carbide materials and power devices lack the ability of large-scale production. At present, China's market share in the field of silicon carbide is low, but it has gradually cultivated all links of the industrial chain and is expected to achieve good development. The state also attaches great importance to the development of the industry, promotes its development through the 863 Plan and the National 02 Major Project, and includes silicon carbide substrates in the 13th Five-Year Plan "Key Product Catalogue of Strategic Emerging Industries". From the perspective of patent applications, from 2018 to 2020, there were 2,887 patents related to silicon carbide in mainland China, and the increase in the number of related patents shows that the technical reserves of silicon carbide of relevant enterprises in mainland China continue to improve. In the past two years, a small number of domestic companies have entered the field of silicon carbide, and Chinese companies have mainly developed 4-inch silicon carbide single crystal substrates, and have developed 6-inch substrates. Silicon carbide wafer manufacturers, mainly Tianke Heda and Shandong Tianyue, have developed rapidly and their market share has increased significantly. San'an Optoelectronics is also making an in-depth layout in the silicon carbide industry chain.
3. High-purity metal sputtering target
Sputtering target is one of the core materials of integrated circuits, and in recent years, it has been developing in the direction of high sputtering rate and high purity metal. With the development and improvement of the consumer electronics terminal market, the downstream demand for high-purity metal sputtering targets continues to rise, and the compound growth rate of the global target market size from 2013 to 2020 is 14%, and the market scale is gradually expanding. The industry barriers to sputtering targets are high, and American and Japanese companies have mastered core technologies and monopolized the global market. The sputtering target industry in mainland China started late and is relatively backward, but the market demand is leading in the world, and there is a large space for domestic substitution. Domestic enterprises are gradually breaking through the technical bottleneck and working hard to break the unfavorable situation of the United States and Japan monopolizing the high-end target market.
Sputtering is one of the important technologies for the preparation of thin film materials, sputtering refers to the use of ions generated by the ion source, in a vacuum through accelerated aggregation to form a high velocity energy ion beam, bombardment of the solid surface, ion and solid surface atoms kinetic energy exchange, so that the atoms on the solid surface leave the solid and deposit on the substrate surface, the bombarded solid is the raw material for the deposition of thin films by sputtering method, called sputtering target. In integrated circuits, the dielectric layer, the conductor layer and even the protective layer inside the unit device all use the sputtering coating process.
Ultra-high purity metal and sputtering targets are an important part of electronic materials, and the sputtering target industry chain mainly includes metal purification, target manufacturing, sputtering coating and terminal application. Target manufacturing and sputtering coating are the key links in the entire sputtering target industry chain, which have high requirements for process level and high entry barriers. Targets are now moving towards high sputtering rate, grain direction control, large size, and high-purity metals. At present, the main high-purity metal sputtering targets include aluminum targets, titanium targets, tantalum targets, tungsten titanium targets, etc., which are the core materials for the preparation of integrated circuits.
The market capacity of the downstream industry of high-purity sputtering target products has been gradually expanding in recent years: 1) Semiconductor industry: with the development of smart phones, The continuous growth of demand for semiconductors in terminal consumer fields such as tablet computers, the further improvement of semiconductor market capacity, the wide variety of sputtering targets required by the semiconductor industry, the large demand, and the stable growth rate of the downstream market will effectively promote the growth of sputtering target sales scale;2) Flat panel display industry: In recent years, liquid crystal display has gradually become the world's mainstream display technology and has been widely used in the flat display market. In order to ensure the uniformity of large areas of flat panel displays, sputtering technology is increasingly being used to prepare these coatings.
Since the 90s of the 20th century, the rapid development of consumer electronics and other terminal application markets has promoted the development of the high-purity sputtering target industry, and the market scale has grown rapidly. From 2013 to 2020, the global sputtering target market size is expected to rise from $7.56 billion to $19.563 billion, with a compound growth rate of 14.42%
Well-known foreign target companies have been precipitating in the R&D and production of targets for decades. Globally, the number of participating enterprises in each link of the sputtering target industry chain is basically pyramid-shaped, and the number of enterprises with large-scale production capacity is relatively small due to the high technical threshold and large equipment investment in the manufacturing of high-purity sputtering targets, mainly distributed in the United States, Japan and other countries and regions. At present, there are four main companies in the global sputtering target market, namely JX Nippon Metal, Honeywell, Toso, and Praxair, with market shares of 30%, 20%, 20%, and 10%, respectively, monopolizing 80% of the global market share. Among them, the highest-end wafer manufacturing target market is basically monopolized by these four companies, which together account for about 90% of the global wafer manufacturing target market share, and JX Nippon Ore Metal is the largest, accounting for 30% of the global wafer manufacturing target market share.
It is estimated that in 2019, domestic demand accounted for more than 30% of the global target market, while the supply of local manufacturers accounted for about 30% of the domestic market. In terms of semiconductor user targets alone, according to the statistics of the China Electronic Materials Industry Association, the domestic sputtering target market for semiconductors in 2020 was 1.615 billion yuan. It is estimated that by 2025, the domestic sputtering target market for wafer manufacturing will grow to US$217 million, and the sputtering target for packaging will grow to US$118 million, totaling US$335 million, or about RMB 2.345 billion.
Affected by the development history and technical limitations, the mainland high-purity sputtering target industry started late, and is still a relatively new industry, and the main high-purity sputtering target manufacturers are invested by state-owned capital and a small number of private capital. Compared with the sputtering targets produced by internationally renowned enterprises, there is still a considerable gap in the production level of sputtering targets in the mainland, and the market influence is very limited. The state promotes the development of the industry through various policies, and the "New Materials Industry Development Guide" issued in 2016 proposes to strengthen the research and development of high-purity metal sputtering target production technology. At the end of 2018, the tax holiday for imported targets ended, opening up the possibility of domestic substitution of domestic targets. At present, China is gradually breaking through the threshold of key technologies, breaking the backward situation that the core technology of sputtering targets is monopolized by the United States and Japan, and the products need to be imported. At present, some of the products of Chinese target manufacturers have reached the international advanced level, and the product quality has been recognized by downstream enterprises at home and abroad, and the price of target materials may be 10%-15% lower than that of foreign manufacturers by building factories near the factories of downstream enterprises, and the necessity and strategic significance of substitution are obvious.
Domestic enterprises have a large production volume of Ashichuang, Longhua Technology, Research New Materials and Jiangfeng Electronic Targets. Among them, the products of Ashtron and Longhua Technology are mainly used for panels. Jiangfeng electronic products cover the fields of semiconductors, solar photovoltaics and panels, and the research and development of new materials mainly produces semiconductor targets.
5
The fourth direction of new materials - new plastics
5.1. Polyamide (PA)
Polyamide (PA) materials have excellent mechanical and chemical properties, and are used in a series of key manufacturing fields such as machinery manufacturing, metallurgy and chemical industry, optical fibers, LED packaging components, etc., and its importance is the first of the five major engineering plastics. Mainland China has achieved rapid growth in production and consumption in the field of conventional PA, and the production and sales of some key raw materials have been in the leading position in the world, but due to the technical barriers of foreign monopolies for raw material production technology, the production capacity of domestic high-end special nylon is limited, the import dependence is large and the imbalance between supply and demand is serious, and the profit margin is seriously squeezed. Under the background of the policy of "carbon neutrality" and "replacing steel with plastic", the realization of domestic substitution of polyamide and its derivative products is of great significance to the development and progress of high-end products in the fields of new energy industry, electronic communications, and transportation in the mainland.
Polyamide is commonly known as nylon (Nylon), and the English name Polyamide is referred to as PA, including aliphatic PA, aliphatic-aromatic PA and aromatic PA, which was the first resin developed for fiber by DuPont Company in the United States and industrialized in 1939. PA has good comprehensive properties, including mechanical properties, heat resistance, wear resistance, chemical resistance and self-lubrication, and low friction coefficient, has a certain flame retardancy, easy to process, suitable for filling with glass fiber and other fillers to enhance modification, improve performance and expand the range of applications. PA is widely used in machinery, automobiles, electrical appliances, textile equipment, chemical equipment, aviation, metallurgy and other fields, and has become an indispensable structural material in various industries.
Polyamide (PA) is the most important engineering plastic, ranking first among the five major engineering plastics in terms of production and production capacity and consumption. The nylon industry family is huge, with a wide range of products, named and classified according to the number of carbon atoms of each repeated amide group, the varieties mainly include PA6, PA66, PA610, PA11, PA12 five varieties, in addition, there are PA1010, PA4, PA8, PA9, PA810 and various copolymer modified nylons, of which PA6 and PA66 are the largest, accounting for about 90% of the total consumption of PA.
In recent years, the growth of global nylon production capacity has been mainly concentrated in China, and the growth of production capacity in foreign regions has almost stagnated. In 2015, the global nylon production capacity was 7.09 million tons, and by 2018, the production capacity increased to 8.19 million tons, with a compound annual growth rate of about 4.93% from 2015 to 2018. Nylon is mainly used in two categories: fiber (nylon) and resin (engineering plastics), and nylon 6 and nylon 66 account for more than 98% of the fibers, and nylon 66 accounts for about 90% of engineering plastics. In 2018, global production of PA6 and PA66 base resins increased to 8.4 million tons.
In terms of demand for polyamide products, the demand for general-purpose polyamide PA66 and PA6 totaled 4.006 million tons, accounting for 92.59%, and the demand for other special polyamides (including long-chain polyamide, high-temperature polyamide and other products) was 320,800 tons, accounting for 7.41%. In recent years, global demand for PA6 precursors and base polymers has been almost flat with production capacity, but PA66, especially its precursor adiponitrile (ADN), has often experienced supply shortages, resulting in significant price increases. Excluding China's nylon demand market, from the consumption performance of nylon 6 and nylon 66 in other parts of the world, the global consumption of nylon 6 has fluctuated around 2.5 million tons/year and nylon 66 consumption at 1.5 million tons/year in the past six years.
In the field of special nylon products, semi-aromatic polyamide materials, as one of the most important varieties of special engineering plastics, have both the excellent performance of aromatic polyamide and the good molding processability of aliphatic polyamide, and are widely used in electronic appliances, automobile industry and other fields. At present, the common PA varieties on the market are PA4T, PA6T, PA9T, PA10T, PA12T and so on. The development of foreign semi-aromatic polyamide industry for many years, mainly monopolized by chemical giants, its product quality is stable, high brand awareness, the main manufacturers are DuPont of the United States, DSM of the Netherlands, Eymans of Switzerland, Solvay of Belgium, BASF of Germany, Mitsui Chemicals of Japan and Kuraray, etc. Semi-aromatic polyamide has high technical barriers, the domestic industrialization process is late, and the current domestic products are uneven, the stability is not good, and the competitiveness is insufficient compared with foreign products.
The production technology of adiponitrile (used in the production of hexamethylenediamine), one of the main precursor raw materials of polyamide 66, is currently controlled by INVISTA, Ascend and other companies, and only INVISTA sells it on a large scale. The technology of using adiponitrile as a raw material to produce hexamethylenediamine is relatively mature, and about 90% of the world's adiponitrile is used to produce hexamethylenediamine. In recent years, due to the rapid economic growth in Asia, especially China, the demand for polyamide 66 is high, and there is no industrial production equipment for adiponitrile that has been built in the mainland, and almost all the adiponitrile required depends on imports, the production capacity of polyamide 66 is not sufficient, and the lack of bargaining power for key raw materials, the production of adiponitrile restricts the development of the hexamethylenediamine industry and the polyamide industry.
The competitiveness of the domestic polyamide industry has been rapidly improved in recent years, and some products still need to be imported from abroad. The mainland polyamide industry has made great progress in recent years, but there are still some problems, such as the development mode has not been fundamentally changed, the lack of common technology research, the original research is weak, the lack of core technology and independent intellectual property rights, some key raw materials rely on imports, in the development cycle, performance, reliability and other aspects of similar foreign products gap, the product structure is not reasonable, high-end polyamide is still mainly dependent on imports, etc. As one of the important polymer materials, polyamide has a global production scale of nearly 10 million tons and a market space of hundreds of billions. According to MarketsandMarkets, the global market size will reach $43.77 billion by 2020. In 2018, the mainland's polyamide production capacity reached 5.141 million tons/year, the demand reached 4.3268 million tons, the domestic output was 3.766 million tons, and the demand gap was 560,800 tons.
The export volume of polyamide from mainland China has remained relatively stable in recent years, and the import volume has shown an increasing trend. According to the statistics of the General Administration of Customs, in 2020, China's domestic polyamide exports were 711,200 tons, polyamide imports were 274,400 tons, and net exports reached 436,800 tons, of which the average annual compound growth rate of polyamide imports from 2014 to 2020 reached 9.78%.
From 2011 to 2018, the growth rate of domestic polyamide 66 production capacity was higher than the growth rate of demand. However, there are structural contradictions in the nylon industry in China, especially the lack of low-end overcapacity and high-end brands, which require a large number of polyamide 66 products to be imported from abroad. In 2018, the United States was China's largest importer, accounting for about 19% of total annual imports, followed by South Korea at 15%, Singapore at 13%, Japan at 8% and Germany at 6%.
At present, the mainland is the world's largest producer and consumer of caprolactam, a raw material for polyamides, and it is also the country with the fastest growth of polyamide production capacity and downstream applications in the world. In 2019, the global caprolactam production capacity is 8.119 million tons / year, Chinese mainland is the world's largest caprolactam production area, although in recent years, the continental polyamide 6 fiber industry has continued to develop rapidly, conventional product production capacity, output has ranked in the forefront of the world, but the structural overcapacity, industry profitability decline is significant, and the industry's independent innovation ability is weak, high value-added, high-tech content products have a low proportion, can not well adapt to functionality, green, differentiation, The demand for personalized consumption upgrading restricts the breakthrough of high-end mass production level and industry profitability, and the industry still has a lot of room for upgrading.
Among the main polyamide 6 products, there is a large import demand for polyamide 6 chips. In 2019, the import volume of polyamide 6 chips in mainland China was 2.91 times that of exports, which is not only related to the expansion of downstream applications of polyamide 6 chips, but also related to the fact that domestic polyamide 6 chips cannot meet the high application requirements. With the continuous expansion of production capacity of leading enterprises, the production capacity of polyamide 6 chips and spinning in mainland China has increased significantly, and the import volume of polyamide 6 chips was 294,400 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 14.19%, and imports showed a downward trend, but there are still two problems in this link: first, the supply of high-quality products is still insufficient, and it needs to rely on imports to make up for it; second, mainland polyamide 6 is still dominated by conventional slicing and spinning products, and lacks characteristic high-quality products, resulting in fierce competition in the same industry and easy to fall into price wars.
China's special nylon market is growing rapidly, and the demand growth rate is significantly higher than that of the world, and the market potential is huge. Specialty nylons are mainly used in the automotive and transportation sectors, electrical and electronic fields. In the automotive and transportation sector, the demand for specialty nylons is primarily driven by the demand for PA12, PA11, PA4/6 and PA6/12 products that meet the needs of automotive thermal management components. This segment is expected to account for more than 37.0% of the global specialty nylon market by 2025. Almost all domestic specialty nylon relies on imports, mainly from international giants such as DuPont, DSM, and Solvay. Vigorously developing new chemical materials and high-end fine chemicals are the two key tasks of the "14th Five-Year Plan". At present, this field is expected to accelerate its development with strong policy support and capital assistance.
Polyamide is the most important engineering plastic, and its downstream products are used in machinery, automobiles, electrical appliances, textile equipment, chemical equipment, aviation, metallurgy and many other fields. Although Continental has achieved significant breakthroughs in technology and output in recent years in traditional bottom-end polyamide products, there is still a huge gap between China and foreign countries when it comes to high-tech barriers such as the production of PA66 raw material adiponitrile and the mass production of long-chain nylon (PA12, etc.). As an important strategic emerging industry in mainland China, the research on new materials, including polyamide and its derivatives, is deepening, and its application fields are also expanding. In the context of "carbon neutrality" and "replacing steel with plastic", polyamide materials have been included in a number of national policy plans.
The "14th Five-Year Plan" clearly points out that it is necessary to focus on seizing the opportunities for future industrial development, cultivating leading and pillar industries, and promoting the integration, clustering and ecological development of strategic emerging industries, including new materials. Considering the diversification of polyamide products, a wide range of application scenarios, and high economic and social value, polyamide products and related whole industrial chains are expected to be further grown in the context of government policy support and economic recovery, and the domestic substitution process of polyamide is expected to be greatly promoted.
5.2、聚苯硫醚(PPS)
Polyphenylene sulfide is a special engineering plastic with excellent physical and chemical properties, and modified polyphenylene sulfide can be used in environmental protection, automobile manufacturing, electrical and electronics, aerospace and other downstream fields, making important contributions to automobile lightweight and air pollution prevention and control, and has broad development prospects in the future. The mainland polyphenylene sulfide industry has developed rapidly in recent years, making up for the shortcomings of the past industry, and enterprises with global competitiveness have begun to take shape. However, compared with the international leading level, there is still room for improvement in many aspects such as technical level, product matrix, and global sales channels. In the future, with the country's increased support for the new material industry, coupled with the steady advancement of the green development strategy of "replacing steel with plastic", the consumption scale and manufacturing capacity of domestic polyphenylene sulfide are expected to be further improved.
Polyphenylene sulfide, known as polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) in English, is a thermoplastic special engineering plastic with excellent comprehensive properties. Polyphenylene sulfide not only has the characteristics of light weight and electrical insulation, but also has the characteristics required by special plastics such as high temperature resistance, high rigidity, corrosion resistance, and radiation resistance. With its excellent physical and chemical properties, polyphenylene sulfide is known as "the world's sixth largest engineering plastic" and "one of the eight major aerospace materials".
There are many methods for the synthesis of PPS, among which the sodium sulfide method is the mainstream technical path for the industrial production of PPS in the world. In the process of producing PPS by sodium sulfide method, the raw materials used are mainly dichlorobenzene and sodium sulfide, which will undergo polymerization reaction in a specific chemical environment to obtain PPS. After the PPS is prepared, certain engineering modifications can be carried out in the deep processing process (such as fiber reinforcement, filling other materials, making alloys) to improve the performance of the PPS according to the specific needs of the downstream. At present, PPS is widely used in many downstream industries, including environmental protection, automobiles, household appliances, electronics, chemicals, building materials and other fields.
According to the statistics of New Materials Online, the current environmental protection industry is the largest sub-industry in the global PPS consumption, accounting for 34.5% of the total global PPS consumption, and PPS is mainly used in the environmental protection industry for the production of filter bags for dust removal equipment. In addition, in the automotive industry, PPS can replace some metal parts, thereby reducing the weight of automobiles. The automotive industry accounts for 34.5% of total global PPS consumption. In the electronic and electrical industry, due to the corrosion resistance and other characteristics of PPS, it has made great achievements in the field of packaging materials, and the current electronic and electrical industry accounts for 15.7% of the total global PPS consumption. In addition, PPS materials also have certain use value in aerospace, coatings and other fields.
According to the data of the leading industrial research network, in 2018, the total global PPS main production capacity was 156,800 tons, and the production capacity under construction was 59,500 tons. Currently, only a small number of countries in the world are able to achieve mass production of PPS. Among them, Japan is the world's leading PPS producer. In addition, China, the United States, South Korea and other countries also have large-scale PPS production capacity layout.
As mentioned above, the environmental protection industry and the automotive industry are currently the main downstream application areas of PPS, and the development and changes of the above two industries have a significant impact on the use of PPS. In the field of environmental protection, there has been a marked difference in the degree of attention paid to developed and developing countries for a long time in the past. Developed countries have relatively perfect policies and regulations in the fields of water pollution, air pollution, and solid waste, and residents have a relatively stronger awareness of environmental protection. However, developing countries regard economic construction as their main goal, and their efforts in the field of environmental protection, as well as their laws and regulations, are not perfect as a whole. In recent years, as the development level of the whole society has reached a certain height, the major developing economies represented by China have taken the initiative to increase environmental protection efforts to promote the development of the environmental protection industry. In the future, with the gradual improvement of the world's development level, other developing countries are expected to replicate the development of China's environmental protection industry. With developed countries as the basic plate and developing countries as the increment, the market size of the environmental protection industry is expected to increase steadily.
In the automotive industry, PPS can replace some metal parts and reduce the weight of automobiles. Due to the huge pressure brought about by global excess carbon emissions and climate change, automobile energy conservation and emission reduction have become the consensus of major countries around the world. However, in the foreseeable future, it will be difficult for new energy vehicles to achieve full market coverage due to the large number of end-users still preferring to use fuel vehicles. Through the lightweight of automobiles, the fuel consumption and carbon emissions of automobiles can be significantly improved. When the weight of the vehicle is reduced by 10%, emissions can be reduced by about 6-8%. Therefore, the lightweight of fuel vehicles is one of the important paths for energy conservation and emission reduction of automobiles, and is supported by the industrial policies of various countries. In addition, there is also a demand for lightweight new energy vehicles. Significantly different from fuel vehicles, the main cost of new energy vehicles comes from power batteries, and vehicle lightweight helps to improve the mileage of new energy vehicles, thereby saving battery costs. In the future, the automotive lightweight market is expected to continue to expand, driving the demand for lightweight materials, including PPS plastics.
In the next few years, with the gradual expansion of the market scale in the downstream environmental protection, automotive and other fields, the PPS market size is expected to maintain the previous growth trend. According to the EIA data of Inner Mongolia Panxun polyphenylene sulfide project, the compound growth rate of global polyphenylene sulfide demand from 2018 to 2020 was 14.38%. With the development of environmental protection, automobiles, and electronics industries, the global demand for polyphenylene sulfide is expected to reach 238,500 tons in 2022 and 350,200 tons in 2025.
The global polyphenylene sulfide industry started in the second half of the last century, and in 1973, the American Phillips Oil Company realized the industrial production of polyphenylene sulfide. Due to the high technical requirements for large-scale production of polyphenylene sulfide, there are many technical bottlenecks in terms of yield, by-products, equipment, process, etc., and only a few countries can produce polyphenylene sulfide resin. According to the data of the leading industry research network, most of the world's major polyphenylene sulfide manufacturers are located in the United States, Japan, Germany and China. Among them, Japan has the largest PPS production capacity, accounting for more than 50% of the world's total production capacity at one time, and in 2018, the production capacity of Japanese manufacturers accounted for 47.7% of the world's major manufacturers. From the perspective of incremental production capacity, although China's production capacity accounts for only 22.3%, Chinese enterprises are most enthusiastic about expanding production, and the capacity under construction accounts for more than half.
At present, Japan is a global leader in PPS production capacity and technology. Nippon Ink Chemical DIC is the world's largest PPS producer, accounting for 21.7% of the world's major producers. Japan's Toray Group has the world's second largest production capacity, accounting for 17.6%. Toray Group's PPS products cover multiple sub-categories such as pure resins, modified composites, fibers, and films, and have a wide range of applications.
On the whole, the industrialization process of the mainland polyphenylene sulfide industry is later than that of developed countries such as the United States and Japan, and once faced great pressure from low profitability. However, in recent years, with the continuous accumulation of fine chemical production experience in the mainland, the competitiveness of the domestic polyphenylene sulfide industry has also been greatly improved, and leading companies such as NHU have the potential to become global polyphenylene sulfide manufacturers. However, there is still a capacity gap in the mainland polyphenylene sulfide industry, and there is still a certain gap compared with the international leading level, and there is room for further development in the high-end product matrix and global sales network. In the context of the current anti-dumping duties on imported polyphenylene sulfide, mainland polyphenylene sulfide producers are expected to usher in a time window for high-end development.
Continental's research in the field of polyphenylene sulfide began in the 60s of the last century, and the starting time is not significantly behind overseas countries, but there is a gap between the leading level of mainland China and foreign countries in terms of R&D process and industrial landing speed. In 1964, the East China Institute of Chemical Technology took the lead in the synthesis and application research of PPS. In the 70s of the last century, more universities and research institutes in mainland China gradually began to study PPS. In the late 80s, Wuhan University achieved a breakthrough in the technology of producing PPS by sulfur solution method, and since then, the mainland has gradually started the process of PPS industrialization, and in the 90s, there were preliminary PPS industry projects in various places. In 2001, Sichuan Deyang Technology Co., Ltd. built the first 1,000-ton PPS production line in mainland China, and has expanded its production capacity several times since then, with a production capacity of 25,000 tons.
Although the mainland petrochemical industry is developed, PPS raw materials are abundant, and there is a broad downstream market, the mainland PPS industry has been less profitable for a long time. Due to the limitations of polymerization technology, modification technology, production equipment and other aspects of the mainland, PPS manufacturing has the problems of high cost, single product structure and poor product quality. In addition to this, the continent produces a large number of pollutants in the process of preparing PPS. Under the influence of these unfavorable factors, it is difficult for domestic PPS in mainland China to compete with foreign imports. In 2014, under the dual influence of insufficient profitability and capital market difficulties, Sichuan Deyang PPS production line was forced to stop production, which brought a certain blow to the mainland PPS industry.
In recent years, with the continuous accumulation of experience in the fine chemical industry in mainland China and the improvement of chemical production technology, a number of rising stars have emerged in the PPS industry in mainland China, carrying the banner of PPS localization. In 2013, after 6 years of development, NHU PPS production line was officially put into operation, with a production capacity of 5,000 tons in the first phase. In 2015, NHU established a joint venture with DSM to be responsible for the production and sales of PPS modified materials. In 2017, the second phase of NHU achieved trial production of 10,000 tons of PPS, and the company's total production capacity reached 15,000 tons per year, and the production capacity reached the international leading level. At present, NHU PPS fiber products are mainly used in high-temperature dust removal filter bags. In addition to NHU, companies such as Dunhuang Western Regions, Chongqing Giant Lion, and Guang'an Jiuyuan have achieved breakthroughs in PPS resin manufacturing technology, providing a large number of new production capacity for the PPS industry in mainland China.
However, PPS is widely used in the downstream, and the demand for PPS in mainland China is relatively large. Since 2015, although the overall demand gap has shown a downward trend, mainland PPS is still in short supply and has a certain import dependence. According to data from Zhiyan Consulting, the demand for PPS in mainland China reached 63,491 tons in 2020, while the supply of domestic PPS was 58,815 tons, of which 32,460 tons were supplied by local enterprises. If the 2020 demand data is not taken into account, the current domestic demand gap is about 4,676 tonnes. If this part of the demand gap is completely filled by local enterprises, there is still nearly 15% room for local enterprises to expand production in mainland China. In addition, there is still a certain distance between the current mainland PPS technology and the world's leading level.
On November 30, 2020, the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China made a final ruling, preliminarily determining that the PPS imported from Japan, the United States, South Korea and Malaysia had been dumped in the Chinese market, causing substantial damage to the PRC industry. Since December 1, 2020, anti-dumping duties have been imposed on imported polyphenylene sulfide originating in Japan, the United States, South Korea, and Malaysia, and major global producers, including DIC and Toray Group, are required to bear anti-dumping duties of more than 25%, and US companies have anti-dumping duty rates of more than 200%. Through the collection of anti-dumping duties, the domestic polyphenylene sulfide market price system is expected to return to a reasonable level, and the profitability of domestic PPS manufacturers will be restored, providing an excellent opportunity for the high-end PPS industry in the mainland.
In recent years, mainland polyphenylene sulfide enterprises have actively introduced, digested and absorbed foreign advanced technology, initially formed a certain production capacity, and changed the situation of relying on imports in the past. However, domestic enterprises have problems such as insufficient innovation ability, fewer product varieties and fewer high-end products. At present, polyphenylene sulfide manufacturers and related listed companies are optimizing the production process, improving product quality and device stability, and focusing on developing the international market.
5.3. Polylactic acid (PLA)
Polylactic acid is the most mature and widely used biodegradable bio-based material in industrialization, and is widely used in many life fields such as textiles, packaging, medical equipment and 3D printing because of its excellent mechanical and environmental characteristics. The domestic polylactic acid production capacity is scattered, the characteristics of economies of scale are obvious, and the whole is in the early stage of industrial development. In addition, due to the fact that the production technology of the key raw material lactide is highly monopolized by foreign giants, the import dependence of polylactic acid is large. With the gradual advancement of the green economy development process of "carbon neutrality", a series of "plastic ban" policies and the help of the strategic development goals of emerging industries will guide degradable bio-based plastics led by polylactic acid to gradually occupy the plastic application market.
Polylactic acid (PLA), also known as polylacide, is a polyester polymer obtained by polymerization of lactic acid as the main raw material, which is a new type of biodegradable material and one of the earliest applications of synthetic biology in the field of materials. The lactic acid or lactide required for the production of polylactic acid can be obtained after fermentation, dehydration and purification of renewable resources, and the obtained polylactic acid generally has good mechanical and processing properties, and polylactic acid products can be rapidly degraded in various ways after being discarded, which has extremely high environmental protection value, therefore, polylactic acid has become the most active and fastest biodegradable plastic in recent years. In addition, in terms of production and manufacturing, polylactic acid is also the most mature industrialization, the largest output, the most widely used, the lowest price of bio-based plastics, is the most promising degradable material to shake the traditional status of petroleum-based plastics in the future, will become the main force of bio-based plastics. As a degradable bio-based material, polylactic acid has many advantages such as abundant raw material sources, good biocompatibility, excellent mechanical and transparent air permeability, and has a wide range of applications.
Biodegradable bio-based plastics are produced from biomass and can be degraded by microorganisms, which not only reduces the consumption of traditional energy such as petroleum, but also improves the ecological environment. The main bio-based degradable plastics are divided into PLA (polylactic acid), PHA (poly3-hydroxyalkanoate), PBS (polybutylene succinate), etc., with multiple downstream application scenarios, taking polylactic acid as an example, its downstream is mainly used in the textile industry, plastic industry, agricultural mulch film, packaging materials, modern medical materials, 3D printing and other fields.
Polylactic acid is an environmentally friendly biodegradable material with broad application prospects, and the global production capacity is constantly increasing, but the production capacity is highly dispersed. Benefiting from the background of green environmental protection, the global biodegradable plastic production capacity has increased steadily, and is expected to reach 1.8 million tons/year in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.61% from 2018 to 2025, among which, the polylactic acid production capacity has been boosted more rapidly, according to the statistics of the European Bioplastics Association, the global polylactic acid production capacity in 2019 was about 271,300 tons, and the production capacity increased to 394,800 tons in 2020, with a single-year growth rate of 45.52%. The number of degradable plastic enterprises in the world is large and regionally dispersed, the types of products produced are significantly differentiated, and the production capacity of a single company is relatively small, because the polylactic acid industry is a capital-intensive manufacturing industry, with obvious economies of scale, and only by reaching a certain production scale can we effectively reduce production costs and have a competitive advantage in the market.
The white pollution caused by improper disposal of plastic waste is imminent, and it has gradually become a global consensus to restrict or prohibit the use of single-use plastic products, which has brought about the application demand for degradable plastic products. Among them, packaging materials are the main consumption areas of the mainland polylactic acid industry, accounting for about 65% of the total consumption, followed by the biomedical field, accounting for about 26% of the total consumption. Europe and North America are the largest markets for PLA, while Asia-Pacific is one of the fastest-growing markets, with the growing demand for PLA in Japan, India, China, and Thailand driving the growth of PLA in the Asia-Pacific market.
It is expected that in the next few years, with the advancement of the plastic ban, the demand for emerging applications such as plastics, packaging, and agricultural mulch films will grow rapidly, driving the rapid growth of polylactic acid demand. The trend towards a circular economy has not slowed down with the pandemic, and the demand for biodegradable PLA will continue to grow. The global economic stagnation and recession caused by the pandemic has lowered demand for synthetic resins for automobiles and home appliances, but packaging related to food, both petrochemical-based and bio-based, remains strong. According to data from IHS Markit, the global polylactic acid (PLA) market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 9% in the future, and the global demand for polylactic acid is expected to reach 301,900 tons by 2023. With the progress of lactic acid polycondensation and catalytic technology in recent years, the production cost of polylactic acid has gradually decreased, and its promotion and application in downstream industries has become increasingly mature in timing, with the gradual recovery of economic shocks brought about by the new crown epidemic, the scale of polylactic acid demand is expected to be further expanded.
The companies with a large proportion of polylactic acid production capacity in the global degradable plastics companies mainly include Nature Works of the United States and Corbion-Purac, a joint venture between Corbion and Total, with an annual production capacity of 150,000 tons and 75,000 tons, respectively. Among them, Nature Works was established in 1997 by Dow Chemical and Cargill, which is the world's largest PLA manufacturer and the only PLA producer in the world with a production capacity of 150,000 tons, far exceeding the production scale of other producers, and built the world's largest polylactic acid production plant in 2001. The polylactic acid industry has a large market space, but it is subject to high core technical barriers, the synthesis and purification of the important raw material lactide is difficult, and the number of companies with the whole industrial chain of "lactic acid-lactide-polylactic acid" is very small, so the industrial chain is relatively scattered, most of the manufacturers are mostly small-scale production, and the world's main polylactic acid manufacturers are distributed in the United States, Europe and China.
Solving the problem of long-term accumulation of waste plastics in the environment has attracted great attention from the whole society and brought development opportunities for degradable plastics. The plastic industry is the pillar industry of the national economy, but the long-term non-standard production and the non-degradable characteristics of traditional plastic products have caused the accumulation of a large number of plastic products, which has caused serious pollution to the environment. As of 2015, about 8.3×109 tons of plastic products have been produced globally, and about 6.3×109 tons have been discarded, of which only 9% have been recycled. In 2019, the mainland plastic processing products were as high as 8.184×107t, ranking first in the world in terms of output and consumption, and in the same year, the mainland produced 6.3×107t of waste plastics, and only 1.89×107t was recycled, with a recycling rate of only 30%, which has a lot of room for improvement and opened up the way for the development of degradable plastics. In addition, in the context of the "carbon neutrality" era, a series of "plastic ban" reform documents issued by the National Development and Reform Commission in recent years are also expected to promote the rapid growth of degradable plastics, including polylactic acid, to a large extent.
In the industrial chain of "lactic acid-lactide-polylactic acid", lactide, an important raw material prepared from lactic acid, is the core link, and the ring-opening polymerization method and direct polycondensation method of lactide are mainly used. The level of synthesis and purification of lactide completely determines the performance of its final product, polylactic acid, and only lactide with high purity can be used to synthesize PLA with high molecular weight and good physical properties. Among them, the purification step of lactide is not only complex process, but also high cost, foreign lactic acid manufacturing enterprises represented by Cobien-Plac have strong research and development capabilities, have made in-depth research on the application of related fields, and carry out a wide range of intellectual property protection of research results, applied for a large number of patents, through continuous technological innovation, established a high technical and intellectual property barriers, in order to maintain their own competitive advantages and market position.
The domestic polylactic acid industry is still in its infancy, the import volume is still growing, and the import and export balance has expanded. In recent years, some domestic corn deep processing enterprises and biochemical enterprises have begun to invest in the PLA industry, and there are not many production lines that have been built and put into operation, and most of them are small. Due to the high price of domestic corn compared with foreign countries, domestic corn deep processing enterprises are burdened with cost disadvantages in building the whole industrial chain of "corn-starch-sugar-lactic acid-lactide-polylactic acid". In addition, subject to technical factors, the raw material for the production of polylactic acid by domestic enterprises is still mainly imported from abroad, and the production cost is high, which has become a bottleneck restricting the development of the domestic polylactic acid industry. In 2020, the import volume of polylactic acid in mainland China reached 25,700 tons, and the demand in the same year was 2,900 tons, and the demand gap was as high as 22,800 tons, and the import demand of polylactic acid in 2019-2020 increased by 5.19% year-on-year.
Domestic polylactic acid production enterprises have steadily expanded production, and the output of polylactic acid is expected to achieve a huge leap in recent years. Taking advantage of the policy, the domestic polylactic acid industry plans to build a significant increase in production capacity. In June 2018, Anhui Fengyuan Group Co., Ltd. has built a polylactic acid project with an annual output of 100,000 tons, and plans to complete a polylactic acid project with an annual output of 300,000 tons in the second half of 2021, Jindan Technology's current polylactic acid production capacity is 10,000 tons, and the construction of a 100,000-ton polylactic acid project will start in the second half of 2021, and it is expected to complete a project with an annual output of 60,000 tons of biodegradable polyester and its products in September 2022. According to statistics, the total production capacity of major domestic polylactic acid producers is 246,000 tons, but the market concentration is low, most of the enterprises are small, and the existing capacity utilization rate is not high.
As an important part of the implementation of the CPC Central Committee's strategy of building a beautiful China, it is the general trend to realize the replacement of traditional plastics with degradable bio-based plastics based on polylactic acid. In recent years, the policy trend has been very clear, and the use of degradable materials has penetrated into all areas of people's daily life, especially in plastic packaging bags, straws and disposable tableware. In the Guiding Catalogue for Industrial Structure Adjustment (2019 Edition), polylactic acid fiber (PLA) is clearly classified as an industry encouraged by the national industrial policy. On January 19, 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the "Opinions on Further Strengthening the Control of Plastic Pollution", and on April 20, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Catalogue of Plastic Products Prohibiting and Restricting the Production, Sales and Use (Draft for Comments)".
Selected report source: Yinchuang Think Tank
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