China TPU industry status and trend analysis: outstanding environmental performance, wide applicatio
Polyurethane is an emerging organic polymer material, known as the "fifth plastic", because of its excellent performance and is widely used in many fields of the national economy. At present, China is the world's largest producer of polyurethane, accounting for about 45% of the world's polyurethane output. There are many kinds of polyurethane products, and polyurethane elastomer is one of them. Polyurethane elastomer is a series of elastomer materials containing more carbamate groups on the polymeric main chain. It is a kind of polymer material that can recover well after the external force is eliminated.
Polyurethane elastomers can be divided into thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers (TPU), cast polyurethane elastomers (CPU) and mixed polyurethane elastomers (MPU) according to the different processes, of which TPU is the largest. The TPU industry is a branch of the polyurethane industry, which is in the downstream of the entire chemical industry chain and closer to the end consumer market.
01, polyurethane elastomer classification
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TPU is a kind of polyurethane elastomer products, its production of polyols, MDI, BDO, adipic acid, ethylene glycol and other raw materials are petroleum derivatives or by-products, petrochemical downstream products. TPU is a branch of thermoplastic elastomer materials, which is a polymer material polymerized from three basic raw materials: diisocyanate, macromolecular polyol and chain extender (low molecular diols).
Compared with the general plastic and rubber materials, TPU has a wide range of hardness, outstanding mechanical properties, high/low temperature resistance, good processing performance, excellent environmental performance, strong plasticity, strong designability, excellent transparent properties and other superior characteristics, it has both high elasticity of rubber materials, and high strength of engineering plastics.
02, TPU material characteristics
source: Zhiyan Consulting
TPU was first developed by Bayer in Germany in 1958, and major chemical enterprises in Europe and the United States have successively developed and put into production. In the 1970s, Japan introduced TPU production equipment from Germany and introduced TPU production technology to Taiwan. The Chinese mainland began to contact TPU production technology in the 1980s, but has not achieved breakthroughs in research and development and technology. After the 1990s, as the market demand for TPU materials grew, some enterprises in the mainland began to produce and sell TPU after European, American and Taiwan-funded enterprises entered the mainland.
03, global and China TPU industry development course
source: Zhiresearch Consulting
Thanks to the excellent product performance, TPU in the daily consumer goods, industrial production, medical health, national defense and other national economic fields of the market demand has increased significantly. In recent years, China's new TPU production capacity has been released one after another, and the TPU operating rate has steadily increased in 2018 and 2019, and the compound annual growth rate of China's TPU production from 2014 to 2019 has reached 15.46%. In 2019, the scale of China's TPU industry continued to expand, with the output of about 512,900 tons. China has gradually surpassed Europe and the United States to become the world's largest TPU production and consumer, and the average annual consumption has maintained a rapid growth of about 10%.
4, 2014-2019 China TPU production charts
source: Zhiyan Consulting
The impact of the 2019 Xiangshui event, the government accelerated the renovation of chemical parks, and the fluctuation of the price of isocyanate of raw materials prompted some small factories to increase the production cost, and the comprehensive impact prompted some small factories in China to shut down their production capacity, and China's TPU supply pattern vacated some space. And including Huafeng, BASF, Meirui and other old producers continue to expand lines, increase production, accelerate market occupation, and industry concentration continues to rise. Among China's TPU suppliers, Huafeng Group and Yantai Wanhua occupy the top capacity.
, 2019 China TPU production pattern distribution
source: Zhiyan Consulting
Although China's domestic TPU production scale is high, it lacks advantages in the subdivision field. Especially in the middle and high-end market, BASF, Huntsman and other multinational companies have outstanding technical advantages, through efficient management mode to improve product performance and quality while reducing product production costs, occupy the main share of China's middle and high-end, high-end market. At present, most of China's TPU production enterprises due to the lack of core technical advantages, single product structure, slow progress of new products lead to the overall weak market competitiveness, industry profits are difficult to effectively improve.
TPU industry technology development direction, scale and competition pattern, growth rate, profit level and other conditions directly depend on the downstream industry market demand.
Data show: with the traditional rubber and plastic materials gradually replaced by environmental protection materials, TPU consumption will continue to grow, widely used in many fields of the national economy. TPU is mainly used in pipe, film, electronic appliances, shoe materials, auto parts, modified adhesive, industrial transmission, adhesive, wire and cable and other fields. Among them, footwear is the main consumer market of TPU, accounting for 40% of the consumption of TPU.
6, TPU downstream application pattern of < China / span>
source: Zhiyan Consulting
China is the world's largest producer and exporter of shoes, the output accounts for more than 50% of the global total. The technical innovation of sole materials is an important innovation point in the footwear industry. Compared with traditional sole materials, TPU performance advantages are obvious, and the amount is increasing. Among them, the resilience and shock absorption advantages of ETPU are outstanding, and the soles made can effectively absorb the impact of the foot and provide high-quality shock absorption effect.
Overall, the TPU industry has the characteristics of relatively high raw material cost, fast product update, many types of specifications and models, and obvious differentiation of customer demand. Therefore, the profit level of the industry is affected by many factors such as the fluctuation of raw material prices, the ability to develop new products, and the level of customer service. As China's policies and measures for residents' sports health have been introduced, as well as the improvement of consumer spending power of residents' sporting goods, the growth of consumer demand for high-tech sports shoes is conducive to improving the application space of the TPU industry. On the other hand, in the high-end market, such as rolled TPU, medical TPU, high-temperature TPU and other varieties, China mainly relies on imports. With the long-term technology accumulation and research and development investment of domestic TPU enterprises, it is expected to break through the monopoly of foreign enterprises and expand the domestic alternative space.