China’s polycarbonate plant capacity is set to grow at a compound annual growth rate, CAGR, of 19.8% from 0.870 million tons per annum (mtpa) in 2017 to 2.150 mtpa in 2022, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The company’s report: ‘Polycarbonate Industry Outlook in China to 2022 – Market Size, Company Share, Price Trends, Capacity Forecasts of All Active and Planned Plants’ revealed that Electrical and Electronics, Construction, Automotive, Optical Applications, Packaging and Medical are the primary sectors that are behind the impressive growth of polycarbonate industry. In 2017, these sectors together accounted for 75.1% of the polycarbonate demand in the country.

Dayanand Kharade, Petrochemicals analyst at GlobalData, explained: “China is set to more than double the thermoplastic engineering material capacity by 2022 in order to cater to the burgeoning domestic demand due to rapid urbanization and industrialization, and reduce dependency on imports.”

Bayer Material Science Polycarbonate Technology is the dominant technology used for polycarbonate production in China and it accounted for 46% of the total installed polycarbonate capacity in 2017.

The largest polycarbonate plants in China in 2017 were ‘Covestro Caojing Polycarbonate Plant 1’, ‘Covestro Caojing Polycarbonate Plant 2’, ‘Teijin Polycarbonate China Jiaxing Polycarbonate Plant’, ‘Ningbo Oceanking Chemical Development Company Ningbo Polycarbonate plant’ and ‘Ling You Engineering-Plastics Shanghai Polycarbonate Plant’.

The major companies in the country are Bayer AG, Lihuayi Group Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co Inc, Ningbo Oceanking Chemical Development Co., Ltd. and Teijin Ltd. In 2017, together these companies accounted for 89.9% of the polycarbonate capacity in China.

Average price of polycarbonate in China is expected to increase at a CAGR of 1.2% from $3013.0/ton in 2017 to $3195.7/ton in 2022.

Between 2008 and 2017, China was a net importer of polycarbonate. During the period, China’s imports as percentage of demand decreased from 105.2% in 2008 to 77% in 2017. GlobalData forecasts imports as percentage of demand to further decrease to 54% in 2022.

Kharade concludes: “Despite the decline, the Chinese market will continue to be heavily reliant on imports until 2022 owing to increased demand from various sectors in the country.”

– Nov. 20, 2018 @ 17:47 GMT |