The growth path of Chinese chemical companies in the post-industrial era

Basic chemical

Towards a new era of innovation-driven development

--- The growth path of Chinese chemical companies in the post-industrial era

There are two ways for national chemical companies in developing countries to catch up:

First, start from the petrochemical plant of large, big companies themselves in a cycle of average profit to maintain in the billions of dollars, which have strength step by step in the direction of high precision pointed special material development.

Second, as China is a manufacturing power, many industries, such as panels, chips and electric vehicles, have been gradually transferred to China. Enterprises in related industries can directly take specialty chemicals as their main business to catch up. Despite the great challenges, it also provides chances. At present, with the success of some enterprises represented by Wanhua Chemical and private large-scale refinery in the petrochemical field, the local chemical industry leaders will also have the revenue volume close to that of overseas giants. If China can no longer maintain the high growth mode driven by real estate investment, then China needs to consider the reality of where the local chemical enterprises, which have been driven by local market demand in recent years, will go in the next stage.

The breakthrough of China’s chemical industry in massive and high-barrier products has come to an end, but there are still shortcomings.

As early as 2010, China’s output value of chemicals surpassed that of the United States and became the world’s largest. In 2014, China’s output value of chemicals surpassed that of the United States and Japan, the second and third largest countries combined. The main logic is that the rapid growth of the Chinese market is driving the transfer of basic chemicals and general materials to domestic production capacity. With the concentrated outbreak of engineers’ bonus and the counterattack of domestic equipment manufacturing industry, it is natural for the technology autonomy after reverse development. Domestic enterprises have made breakthroughs in many large and high-barrier varieties such as MDI, PC, titanium dioxide chloride and egg-laying acid. But look at China’s trade deficit: every year, China needs to import synthetic materials of $75 billion and $37 billion high-end chemicals. Although some are caused by the resource endowment, in most of the high performance composite materials, semiconductor materials and other specialty chemicals areas, they are still one of the shortcomings and the key breakthrough in the chemical industry.

From the status quo of R&D investment, the two directions of the rise of local enterprises are as follows.

Overseas, multinationals have refocused on higher-margin niches after hitting growth limits. In the future, the battle between emerging market players, including Chinese companies, and multinational companies, will shift to specialty chemicals across the board. If we observe from two dimensions, one is the absolute scale of R&D investment. The front-line leaders of each sub-industry represented by Wanhua Chemical are breaking through the boundary of specialty chemicals field and making an impact on global giants through diversified transformation. Second, enterprises with relatively high R&D expenses, namely the leading force in the new materials industry, are expected to emerge as invisible champions in subdivided fields as the downstream application scenes, such as panel display, semiconductor and 5G, are transferred to domestic production capacity.

Top-level design promotes the transfer of overlapping downstream application scenarios, and China’s chemical industry enters the innovation-driven era.

From the perspective of policy, the new material industry has been the development direction supported by China for many years, and the selection of new chemical materials after the launch of science and technology innovation board has become an important driving force for China to “strengthen its weaknesses” and promote industrial upgrading. In addition, with the application scenarios of downstream semiconductor, panel display and lithium battery industry gradually transferred to China, and 5G industry taking the lead in the Chinese market, the import and replace of electronic chemicals in related fields is expected to accelerate, and China’s chemical industry is about to enter a new era driven by innovation.

Risk warning

Global political environment risk; the risk of technology progress falling short of expectations; risk of policy adjustment; risk caused by increasing industrial competition