China is world number one in terms of producing, importing and consuming paraxylene

18-Apr-14

Paraxylene (PX), which serves as the significant and basic chemical, has enjoyed extensive application in many fields of chemical production, such as chemical fiber, synthetic resin, pesticide, medicine and plastics etc. Currently PX is mainly used for producing pure teraphthalic acid (PTA) and then producing polyester, as well as used as raw material for solvent, medicine, spice and printing ink. As per Research&Markets, China is the world largest country in terms of producing, importing and consuming PX. Recently, with rapid growth of China's polyester industry, there is an increasing market demand for PX, but PX production capacity cannot meet the demand due to the slowdown of PX development in China. At present there are 13 PX manufacturing enterprises totally in China, and most of them are subsidiaries of Sinopec, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), which are the three major state-owned oil companies; data released by China Chemical Fibers Association(CCFA)show that among domestic existing PX production capacity, Sinopec can produce 3.649 mln tons, accounting for 40.3%, CNPC produces 1.883 mln tons, accounting for 20.8%, CNOOC 0.8 mln tons, accounting 8.8%. Before the year of 2000, PX supply and demand kept in a relative balance, and the self-sufficiency rate was 88% in 2000; along with the rapid development of PX projects in China, PX production capacity came to be the number one in the world from 2000 to 2010; China has become the world largest PX consumer since 2010, and China's PX production capacity accounted for about 24% of the world's PX production capacity, while PTA which is the downstream product of PX accounted for about 55% of global production capacity, resulting in domestic supply was far from meeting the demand, and PX foreign-trade dependence reached 45%.