Introduction: PX companies will have no profit at all in the second half of this year. It can be said to be the most miserable period in history. Looking at historical data and using naphtha as the raw material, PX profits are basically around US$50/ton in 2018. When the profit of PX was the highest, it could even reach US$365/ton, but today’s PX is no longer what it used to be, and it has completely bid farewell to the era of high profits.
When it comes to PX, many people think of high profits, monopolized industries, and high barriers to entry, yes! Before 2015, it can be basically considered that due to the high technical difficulty, early PX devices were basically distributed in foreign companies such as Japan, South Korea, and the United States. China’s PX started a little later, with slow growth in production capacity and no own production technology, so it needed to rely on a large amount of imports. , to make up for the supply gap, which leads to the pricing power in Asia, that is, the large-scale manufacturing companies in Japan and South Korea have the final say. Their control capabilities are strong, and PX prices basically remain at a high level. In addition, the threshold for PX is indeed high, because a separate MX-PX production device is of little significance, the cost of xylene as raw material is high, and the price of naphtha is low, so if you want to install a PX device, you basically need to install a complete aromatics combined device. From reforming to triphenyl-PX, the investment is at least 10 billion yuan, and there are also high patent technology fees. Small and medium-sized enterprises can only stay away. Early domestic enterprises are basically owned by Sinopec, and the monopoly is slightly stronger.
However, words such as high profit, monopoly industry, and high threshold are obviously inappropriate nowadays. With the rise of private PX companies, especially leading PTA companies expanding their industrial chains upwards, many companies have realized the self-production of PX for their own use. , import volume has begun to show a downward trend this year, and the ability of Japan and South Korea to control prices has been greatly reduced. It is precisely because of the concentrated release of many production capacities, corporate competition has intensified, PX profits have been seriously compressed, and industrial chain profits have gradually been transferred to PTA. In addition, in large-scale refining and chemical Under the trend of integration, many bases are equipped with PX projects, and Sinopec already has its own technology patents, and the threshold difficulty is gradually lowered.
Datasource:JinLianchuang
PX’sprofitsinthethirdquarterofthisyearbasicallyhoverednearthecostline,andthelossesinthefourthquarterbecamemoreandmoreobvious.Asforthesecondhalfoftheyear,PX’shighestprofitwasUS$35/tononJuly3,anditshighestlosswas-112US$/tononNovember29.Themainreasonforthesluggishprofitswastheincreaseinsupply.Inthefirsthalfoftheyear,HengliPetrochemical’s4.5milliontons/yearPXunitwasputintooperation.SinochemHongrun’s 600,000 tons/year PX unit and Hainan Refining and Chemical’s second phase 1 million tons/year PX unit were both put into operation in the second half of the year. In addition, Brunei Hengyi’s 1.5 million The ton/year PX device was put into operation in early November. Although the company is in Brunei, all PX is supplied to the domestic South China market. Zhejiang Petrochemical’s 4 million tons/year PX device is planned to be put into operation at the end of the year. It is currently under trial operation. The new production capacity in the later period will generally be larger, so PX losses have become the new normal. However, there will also be more new downstream PTA production capacity next year, and the demand for PX is expected to increase, which may curb losses to a certain extent. However, it is already beyond the reach of PX to return to high profits. </p
