Challenges and opportunities facing the polypropylene industry

Jiangnan University Ge Yuguang

Jiangsu Jialun New Material Co., Ltd. Zhang Ximing

Sunmen, Humen Gold Color Master Factory, Dongguan City

As we all know, since the advent of polypropylene, its production capacity and market demand have been developing at an impressive speed. It has become the world's fastest growing synthetic material with the widest variety and the most versatile. According to the prediction of international authorities, this trend will continue as the world economy develops. The production capacity and demand of polypropylene in China have been growing at a much faster rate than the world average, but the production capacity still cannot keep up with the development of demand. At present, China's polypropylene self-sufficiency is only 70%, and 30% need to be resolved by imports, making China the world's largest importer of polypropylene. The development of polypropylene is so rapid, the market demand is so great, most of the representatives present here may not be able to personally experience this. What can be realized is that the polypropylene factory has more and more survival pressure and the profit margin is getting smaller and smaller. This is an undeniable fact and a problem that we all face together. My topic today is to analyze this situation with you and explore the direction of future development.

1           The development process of polypropylene in China

In the 1970s, companies represented by Shanghai 31 Cotton began to produce polypropylene staple fibers, but the output was small. The outbreak of polypropylene development was in the mid-eighties. The products of the factory were mainly filaments and elastic yarns. The characteristics of polypropylene companies have sprung up, but the scale is relatively small. The products all replace some polyester and nylon in the clothing field with price advantage. The equipment used was a VC403 spinning machine, a VC441 drafting machine and a VC711 texturing machine. At that time, there were three reasons for the formation of polypropylene investment climax: First, polypropylene is cheap; second, polypropylene is simple to process, technical difficulty is not high, and entry is easy; third, investment is small and returns are fast. As the number of enterprises increases and production increases, market competition begins to appear. Then a series of differentiated varieties such as foreign fibers and colored fibers came out. When people got a better understanding of the performance of polypropylene, they began to develop in the field of decoration. At the same time, the spinning equipment also developed from VC403 to VC404, and then developed to VC406. The drafting device evolved from VC401 to VC402 to VC443. The bombing equipment evolved from VC711 to VC473. The continuous development of new products and the continuous upgrading of equipment mean that competition among enterprises is intensifying. By the early 1990s, the polypropylene manufacturers at the beginning of the early stage were relatively thick, and they had a deeper understanding of polypropylene, and they were more aware of the future development direction. So some companies began to explore new application areas, into BCF carpet wire, spunbonded nonwovens and medium and high-strength industrial yarn. The polypropylene filament factory left behind is shrinking, and the variety is limited to the colored silk used for the surface, and a small amount of colored silk, ribbon yarn and luggage silk used in the decorative field. When the quilt is commonly used, the amount of polypropylene filaments is even smaller, and then the price of polypropylene chips and the price of polyester chips are upside down. A lot of polypropylene products can't be produced, and the market once occupied by polypropylene has been taken back by polyester. It can be said that all polypropylene plants are facing such challenges. This period of history also tells us that China's polypropylene industry is slowly maturing, and our polypropylene factory's ability to meet challenges and resist risks is also growing.

2           Factors driving the rise in polypropylene prices

Of course, the rise in oil prices is the main factor driving the rise in polypropylene prices. But as oil prices rise, all synthetic materials prices will rise simultaneously. Regardless of the monomer raw materials and processing costs, the price of polyester exceeds that of polypropylene. In the past, the price of polypropylene was about 1,000 yuan/ton lower than polyester, but now the price of polypropylene is about 1,500 yuan/ton higher than polyester. The fundamental reason is that with the advancement of polypropylene production technology in recent years, especially the introduction and application of various new catalysts, modifiers, additives, and the improvement of production processes, the world's major companies continue to increase application research and development. A large number of new polypropylene products have greatly expanded the application range of polypropylene and opened up new application fields. Polypropylene has the advantages of small specific gravity, non-toxicity, easy processing, impact strength, flex resistance and electrical insulation, which makes it widely used in the automotive industry, household appliances, electronics, packaging and building materials. Among the five general-purpose plastics, polypropylene production is second only to polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride, and domestic consumption ranks second only to polyethylene. In fact, the fiber consumption of fiber is only about 10% of its total. In the world polypropylene consumer market, injection molding products account for a major share, especially in industrially developed countries and regions. higher. When the superior performance of a material is fully exploited and the scope of application is rapidly broadened, its price is bound to rise. Considering the cost-effectiveness of polypropylene, at least 10% of the fibers have the right to speak.

3         Opportunities in the polypropylene industry

The rapid development of polypropylene has been largely due to the continuous advancement of catalyst performance. Since the first discovery in 1954 by Professor Natta in the laboratory for more than 50 years after the synthesis of polypropylene resin using titanium chloride as a catalyst, the performance of polypropylene catalysts has been continuously improved and improved. Currently, polypropylene catalysts produced in the world fall into two broad categories. One type of catalyst is an improvement and improvement over the ZN catalyst, and the other is a metallocene and a non-mono-active center catalyst. The development direction of ZN catalysts is to develop serialization and high performance on the basis of high activity and high directionality, and continuously develop new products with better performance. The development direction of metallocene and non-mono-active catalysts is to further realize the industrialization of technology and the market for general-purpose products with large demand. In short, the ultimate goal of the development and application of these catalysts is to increase the variety of polypropylene, improve the quality and reduce the cost.

On the other hand, we can see that there are a large number of polypropylene production facilities in China, and the production capacity of a single set of devices is small. The average production capacity of the continuous process production equipment is only about 100,000 tons/year, which is far lower than the average production of the world polypropylene production process. scale. Because the scale of the device is too small, energy consumption and material consumption are generally higher than the advanced level in foreign countries, the price of the product is also difficult to come down. In recent years, in addition to a few sets of scales of 200,000 tons, the vast majority has exceeded 300,000 tons and reached a world-class scale, so that the cost can be expected to decline significantly.

The sustained high growth of the polypropylene consumer market will inevitably catalyze the investment boom of the polypropylene industry. In fact, this wave of enthusiasm has started in 2006, and the investment is based on the average growth rate of polypropylene production capacity in the world from 2000 to 2006, which is 4.6%. The growth rate of consumption during the same period was 6.4%. According to investment practice, a new round of investment will have a certain margin, and the global financial crisis in 2008 will definitely make a discount on the growth rate of polypropylene. It is estimated that by 2010, the operating rate of polypropylene in the world will drop to about 80%. China is the world's largest importer of polypropylene, with a gap of 3 million tons per year. Therefore, in this wave of investment boom, there will be 6 million tons/year of production capacity, of which 65% belong to Sinopec and PetroChina (Sinopec is 2.53 million tons/year, and PetroChina is 1.35 million tons/year). If the newly built equipment can be put into production as scheduled, Sinopec's production capacity will probably exceed the number one Basel, ranking first in the global polypropylene producers, and PetroChina will also enter the top five. Another problem worth considering is that in China's polypropylene consumption structure, the consumption of membrane fiber accounts for about 50% of the total polypropylene. Because China is a big country in the export of woven bags, with the rapid development of China's economy and the improvement of national living standards, the production cost of woven bags has increased rapidly, and its competitiveness in the world will decline. This will inevitably lead to the transfer of this industry to the underdeveloped countries, thus affecting the actual use of polypropylene in China.

In summary, in the next few years, the variety of polypropylene will certainly be more and more, the quality will be better and better, and the selection of raw materials will become larger and larger. The return of the polypropylene price that everyone is looking forward to may be possible. By that time, polypropylene started again in the spring.

4         Advantages of polypropylene

After more than 30 years of ups and downs, domestic polypropylene products have been falling and falling, and there are few left. To sum up, there are a total of four types of products, which are determined by the nature of polypropylene itself, and have been repeatedly tested by the market to truly determine the status of their products.

4.1   Fine denier polypropylene filament

It is not advisable to use a single polypropylene filament for clothing. It has a fatal weakness that is poor drape (light weight). However, the advantage of using polypropylene without moisture absorption and good moisture permeability combined with cotton, silk and hemp with good water absorption constitutes the fabric with the best wearing comfort, which makes other textile fibers inferior. This fabric is the best choice for underwear and sportswear, especially for the intense movement of high latitude cold belts without worrying about body stickiness and colds. It is emphasized here that to make such products, dyeable polypropylene must be used. Because the polypropylene can not be dyed, the color contrast of the front and back of the fabric is too large, and the grade of the garment is down. At present, it is not possible to produce spun fine dyeable polypropylene. Foreign reports are the use of metallocene-catalyzed polypropylene (miPP). Metallocene-catalyzed polypropylene can be used to attach other specific monomers to the polypropylene during the polymerization process, and can lock the molecules. The fibers are not easily deformed. This specific monomer If it is an organic reactive group, the dyeing can be improved. The metallocene-catalyzed polypropylene has a molecular weight distribution of 2.0 (commonly 3-6), and fine fineness and high spinning speed can be easily obtained.

4.2   Polypropylene carpet

The carpets commonly used in office buildings, hotels, hotels and homes are made of polypropylene or nylon. Compared with the two, the wear resistance and resilience of nylon are better than that of polypropylene. The nylon can be printed in color, but the polypropylene can't. However, the anti-staining ability of polypropylene (non-hygroscopic) is better than that of nylon. More importantly, polypropylene is not only light in weight, but its price is only 1/2 of that of nylon. This makes polypropylene have enough space for competition in the carpet industry and nylon. . From a technical point of view, there is a lot of room for the quality and functionality of the polypropylene carpet. The spinning of hollow fiber can improve the resilience of polypropylene. The use of dyeable polypropylene can realize the color printing, making it possible to produce small-volume and multi-variety economic carpets, and make up for the shortage of raw liquid coloring products in this field. Adding flame retardant can be made into flame retardant carpet to meet the fire protection requirements of office buildings, hotels and other places. Embedding metal composite conductive fibers in carpet weaving not only eliminates the static electricity of the carpet, but also has a good antibacterial effect.

4.3   Polypropylene hygienic material

The dominance of polypropylene in the field of disposable hygiene products is quite stable. Polypropylene nonwoven fabrics are widely used in baby diapers, feminine hygiene products, adult incontinence products and disposable medical garments. The biggest driver of the growth of the world polypropylene fiber market is the increasing consumption of disposable nonwovens. Foreign raw material production enterprises attach great importance to this field and have introduced a variety of special materials for spunbond non-woven fabrics. According to reports, these special materials can reduce processing smoke by 50%, eliminate the yellowing caused by oxidation of the product, and reduce the melting point of polypropylene ( 148 ° C ), good liquidity, production line speed 4200 meters / points and other advantages. These special materials can be used to produce lighter, softer heat-bonding fabrics, and can also be used to produce nonwoven fabrics with higher filtration efficiency.

4.4   Polypropylene webbing material

The raw materials used in the luggage belt field are mainly nylon, polyester and polypropylene. Due to the price, nylon has basically withdrawn from the field. Therefore, the market for luggage and bags is the competition between polyester and polypropylene. The requirements for strength of the bag and the polyester can be satisfied. The specifications of the bag with fiber are medium and thick, which is more suitable for polypropylene processing, and can be used with the cheapest slice or powder, even with a little bit of return material, and polypropylene The processing cost is lower than polyester. The dyeing of the bag belt is all pigmented, and the polypropylene can avoid the shortcomings of dyeing. The price of the bag with the factory is determined by the width and thickness of the tape, which is an absolute advantage. The proportion of polypropylene is 0.92g /cm ³ , and the specific gravity of polyester is 1.38 g /cm ³ , the difference between the two is 1.5 times, which is enough to offset the price difference between the two in the raw materials, so the webbing industry polypropylene is still dominant.

4.5   other

Polypropylene high-strength wire is indeed a good variety. Jiangsu Jialun New Material Co., Ltd. 3000D-12000D polypropylene high-strength wire can reach up to 7.5g /D, elongation at 12 ± 2%. The physical indicators can be adjusted according to the different requirements of geotechnical materials. However, since the price of polypropylene is higher than that of polyester 1500 yuan/ton, the competitive advantage of polypropylene high-strength yarn is lost, and it can only be used in special occasions where acid and alkali are required, and the amount is obviously reduced. As long as the price of polypropylene comes down, the amount of polypropylene high-strength wire will go up immediately.

The road of polypropylene cigarette filter has basically been completed, mainly because the performance of polypropylene can not be compared with acetate. China National Tobacco Corporation has reduced the number of domestic polypropylene filter manufacturers to two, one in Wuxi and one in Danyang. Next year is the last year of production of the polypropylene cigarette filter, and the historical mission is completed when it expires. At present, both of them are using corn fiber to develop cigarette filters, but the technology of filter glue is difficult to pass.

5         Conclusion

As far as the polypropylene industry is concerned, the polypropylene plant is facing a greater pressure of survival due to factors such as the price increase of polypropylene and the single product of the company. The rapid growth of polypropylene consumption and the increase in profits of manufacturers have attracted the influx of global technology and capital, making polypropylene the world's fastest-growing, most versatile and most versatile synthetic material. The improvement of the overall technical level of polypropylene will in turn drive the development of the polypropylene industry, making the polypropylene plant more room for raw material selection, while improving the quality of existing products and developing more functional varieties. In this process, the technical innovation and structural adjustment of the polypropylene plant is even more important.