The competition of methyl methacrylate industry is increasingly fierce

Since 2019, the domestic market price of methyl methacrylate (MMA) has shown a sharp decline. According to statistics, as of mid December, the average price of East China market was about 10300 yuan (ton price, the same below), about 5700 yuan lower than the beginning of the year, a drop of 36%. Industry insiders analyzed that the explosive growth of MMA production capacity broke the overall supply-demand balance of the market, and the development environment of the terminal industry was poor, which led to a sharp drop in domestic MMA prices, coating online coatingol.com. In the second half of this year, 85000 T / a project of Jiangsu silbang phase II and 100000 t / a MMA project of Chongqing Yixiang were put into production in September and October respectively, and it is expected that there will be more than 1 million T of new capacity in the next five years. In 2020 alone, nearly 400000 tons of production capacity will be put into operation, and many projects are still under construction. Many chemical enterprises are planning to join MMA industry. While injecting fresh blood into MMA industry, the market competition is more and more fierce. In addition to the explosive growth of domestic production capacity, MMA import also shows an increasing trend this year. According to the customs data, the domestic import of MMA from January to October was about 173000 tons, an increase of about 20% compared with the import of 138000 tons in the same period of 2018. In December 2015, the Ministry of Commerce issued a notice to decide to implement anti-dumping measures for MMA imported from Singapore, Thailand and Japan for a period of 5 years.

It can be predicted that, with the expiration of anti-dumping measures by the end of 2020, MMA imports will increase. In the future, although PMMA is still the main consumption area of domestic MMA, its proportion may decline. Due to the oversupply of low-end products in the domestic PMMA market and the dependence on imports in the high-end market, this structural imbalance is difficult to change in the short term. In addition, it will also face competition from polystyrene (PS) and polycarbonate (PC) and other alternative products. The future competition in the domestic PMMA industry will be more fierce, which will have a certain impact on the demand for MMA. In the field of surface coating, MMA is used to produce solvent coating, water-based coating and latex paint, which can be used in automobile, furniture and construction industries. With the improvement of people's living standard, the output of domestic high-grade coatings, especially high-grade waterborne coatings, will increase rapidly. The process formula will gradually be in line with the international standards, and the demand for MMA will increase accordingly, but it will be a long process. In the short term, due to the relatively limited application, the demand for MMA in the coating industry is only a drop in the bucket. In a word, with the rapid expansion of MMA production capacity in China, and MMA's anti-dumping measures are about to expire, the market competition will enter the white heat. Therefore, MMA enterprises can only win in the competition only by continuously improving their technological advance and reducing production costs. At the same time, we should also increase the development of downstream products, improve the comprehensive profitability of enterprises, and promote the domestic MMA industry to the high-end development.