Customs statistics show that my country’s PX import volume in April 2020 was 1.031 million tons, a month-on-month decrease of 17.31%, and a year-on-year decrease of 27.07%. PX import dependence was 38% in April, compared with 50% for the whole of 2019.
In 2019, the total new domestic PX production capacity was 8.33 million tons, superimposed on the public The health incident caused the operating rate of downstream PTA devices to be low in the first quarter. From the figure, we can see that PX imports have dropped to 1.031 million tons in April 2020, and import dependence has dropped to 38%. The import dependence rate for the whole year of 2019 was 50%. Due to high PX inventory and common problems such as contract reductions and delayed arrivals by downstream factories, PX imports decreased by 17.31% month-on-month in April. So which countries saw significant reductions in imports in April?
As can be seen from the above figure, South Korea, Japan, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Oman, and Saudi Arabia all had different decreases in April. Among them, South Korea, Japan and India saw significant decreases. Brunei, Thailand and Taiwan, China, have overall higher import volumes. Longzhong believes that the PX equipment in countries with reduced imports has been overhauled, while Taiwan, China and Brunei both have PTA factories in the country, which is the main reason for the increase in imports. Let’s take a look at the changes in equipment start-ups in various countries.
Looking at the year-on-year trend of PX operating rate in 2020, although the operating rate was low from January to February, it was mainly due to the commissioning of new equipment of Zhejiang Petrochemical, which lowered the overall As for the operating rate, excluding the decrease in operating rate caused by device failure in early April, the PX operating rate in the rest of the time is at a higher level than in previous years. With the production capacity base significantly increased, domestic PX production has also increased significantly.
Foreign PX, especially Japan and South Korea, mainly rely on the Chinese market for digestion. Therefore, from January to April, the peripheral operating rates of PX showed a downward trend.
The above data shows that after the demand drops, the first ones to be affected are the downstream companies without supporting facilities. Therefore, as the domestic PX production capacity further increases in the future, the operating pressure of peripheral PX companies will will be gradually increased.
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