Thee long-term prospects of polyester industrial yarns are promising, but the market is still uncertain in the second half of the year

Edited by Zhao Xinhua

In recent years, the domestic polyester industry filament production and technology continue to improve, the downstream application of products continues to expand. Especially in the application of high-end products, areas related to the automotive safety industry are outstanding. Moreover, these fields are relatively less affected by industry periodicity. At present, the annual production capacity of polyester industrial yarns in China accounts for about 70 percent of the total annual production capacity of polyester industrial yarns in the world, which is in a leading position in the global market.

Industry insiders point out that although the impact of the global pandemic spread on the market is difficult to eliminate in the short term, but in the long term, on the one hand, global car production and ownership continue to increase, car safety issues are getting more and more attention; on the other hand, compared with nylon industrial yarn, polyester industrial filament has a higher cost performance. Overall, in the future, the demand for polyester industrial filament in tire cord fabric, seat belts, airbags and other automotive safety fields is still strong, which will continue to drive the rapid development of the industry.

In this context, leading enterprises have formulated and implemented expansion strategy. Hengli Chemical Fiber project with an annual output of 200,000 tons of industrial fiber has been put into full operation. In addition, Hengli Petrochemical’s new project with an annual output of 1.4 million tons of industrial yarn in Suzhou headquarters is currently in the project planning stage, and construction will start in the future.

Polyester industrial yarn belongs to technology intensive and capital intensive industry, industry concentration is high. In the medium and long term, new technologies, new products and high-end differentiated fiber products will continue to emerge, and the application field of polyester industrial yarn will continue to expand, and the downstream demand growth is good. From the overall development trend of the industry, large-scale, differentiated and intensive production will be the mainstream trend of the future development of the industry. It is expected that the backward production capacity in the industry will be gradually eliminated by the market in the future, and the market competition will remain relatively stable.

“At present, the market situation is not clear and still needs to be viewed with caution,” an industry insider talked about the market situation in the second half of this year, “From the supply side, some leading enterprises have increased the capacity of polyester industrial yarn, and some enterprises are still increasing their new capacity. The overall supply of the market has increased by hundreds of thousands of tons. From the consumer side, the export market has been affected, part of the original export market products are turned to domestic market, which intensified the competition of domestic market. It’s still hard to say what the market will be in the second half of the year.”