Operation of my country's chemical fiber industry from January to September 2021

Since the beginning of this year, the domestic and foreign challenges faced by the industry are complex, especially in the second half of the year, the domestic epidemic situation will increase and decrease, and the dual control of energy consumption will continue to increase, which has a significant impact on the recovery of the industry's main operating indicators. The stable domestic demand market and the increase in international demand are still favorable for the economic operation of the industry. The continuous rise of international oil prices has provided strong support for the chemical fiber market, but at the same time, it has also increased the production cost of enterprises. Looking forward to the whole year, the operation of the chemical fiber industry will still face many challenges, but the industry has good development resilience and risk resistance, and will still achieve stable development.

The operation is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

1. Production growth slows down

In the first three quarters, the overall start-up load of the chemical fiber industry remained at a high level, but in September, the start-up load dropped rapidly due to the dual control of energy consumption and power rationing. Taking direct-spun polyester filament as an example, the start-up load in early September was about 85%, and it dropped to about 75% at the end of September; although it rebounded slightly in October, it was still running at a low load, with an average monthly start-up load of about 77%, a new low for the year. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to September, the output of chemical fiber was 50.37 million tons, an increase of 13.54% year on year. Taking January to September 2019 as the base period, the average growth rate of chemical fiber production for two years was 6.75%.

From a monthly perspective, affected by the change in the base of chemical fiber production last year, the year-on-year growth rate of chemical fiber production this year has dropped month by month (Figure 2). In addition, due to the influence of dual control and power rationing of energy consumption, the production of chemical fiber in a single month in September decreased by 2.0% year-on-year. In September, the growth rate of chemical fiber production fell to 13.5%, 3.6 percentage points lower than the growth rate in the first half of the year. Judging from the average growth rate of the two years, the average growth rate in the first three quarters remained stable with some declines, and the growth rate slowed down.

Figure: Changes in the growth rate of chemical fiber production in 2021

(Data source: National Bureau of Statistics)