At present, China has become the world's largest manufacturer of chemical products. It is expected to maintain a high growth rate in the future and its influence will further expand. From the perspective of the development trend of the chemical industry, China's fine chemical industry still has much room for development. Fine chemical industry is a strategic focus of the chemical industry development in various countries in the world, and it is also an important development direction of China's chemical industry. The prospect is still promising.

Development status of fine chemical enterprises

At present, most of the fine chemical companies in China are lagging behind in equipment, too long technological research and development cycles, insufficient research and development, insufficient capital investment, and have not yet formed a perfect innovation system. There are very few practical fine chemicals, and their innovation is not high. No core competitiveness has been formed.

At the same time, the concentration of fine chemicals is very low, and most companies are scattered and it is difficult to produce high-level fine chemicals. The fine chemical industry should have been highly integrated with the development of information technology, but at present the domestic fine chemical industry is still in an embarrassing situation to survive, and there is no time to consider information technology, which seriously restricts the healthy development of the fine chemical industry.

Moreover, most companies are "profit-only" and do not consider the problem of environmental pollution at all, causing a lot of waste of resources. The huge cost of processing the "three wastes" has become a heavy economic burden on the fine chemical industry. It can be said that environmental pollution has not only become a huge challenge for human sustainable development, but also the biggest obstacle to the development of elaborate chemical industry.

Comparison of China and foreign refinement rates (Unit:%)

Source: Foresight Institute of Industry "China Fine Chemical Industry Report"

Supply analysis of fine chemical products

In the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” issued by the country, it is proposed that by 2015, the domestic self-sufficiency rate of fine chemical industry should reach more than 80%, and in terms of the current self-sufficiency rate of the fine chemical industry, a large amount of capital and technology investment is still needed. Due to technology and other reasons, domestic progress in new areas of fine chemicals and new chemical materials has lagged slightly. The domestic self-sufficiency rate in the new field of fine chemicals is 70% -75%, and the self-sufficiency rate in the fields of electronic chemicals is less than 50%. In terms of new chemical materials, the domestic self-sufficiency rate is only hovering between 55% -60%. between. In these high-tech fields, the more high-end and important products, the lower the domestic self-sufficiency rate.

Not only that, the structure of China's fine chemical products is not very reasonable. At present, domestically produced new chemical materials are mainly low-end products, while mid-to-high-end products are mainly imported. For example, the price of imported polytetrafluoroethylene is about twice the price of exported polytetrafluoroethylene.

The new chemical materials produced in China are mainly general-purpose products and lack special products for market segments. For example, in the four major types of silicone materials (silicone rubber, silicone oil, silicone resin, and silane coupling agent), developed countries have 6-8 thousand specific varieties and brands, while there are only dozens of them in China.

Comparison between the number of China's fine chemical companies and the number of newly started projects from 2009 to 2015 (unit: unit, item)

Source: Foresight Institute of Industry "China Fine Chemical Industry Report"

In addition, the market for some environmentally friendly products is still in its infancy. Because China has not levied environmental taxes on ordinary plastics that cannot be biodegradable. Compared with traditional plastics, degradable plastics are more expensive to use, and the market for degradable plastics is still in the early stages of development. As a developing country, the ODS substitutes currently used in China are still mainly HCFCs, which have less damage to the ozone layer. In the future, it will need to be gradually replaced by HFC, which has no damage to the ozone layer.

Fine Chemical Industry Prospect Forecast

It is precisely because of the above-mentioned shortcomings that China's fine chemical industry will have more development prospects in the future. As more and more multinational companies invest and build factories in China, the continuous expansion of scale and the introduction of advanced preparation technology will inevitably bring about a continuous increase in the supply of China's fine chemical market.

According to statistics, in 2015, the total industrial output value of China's fine chemical industry was about 372.1 billion yuan, an increase of about 10% over 2014. According to the current development momentum, it is estimated that by 2021, the total industrial output value of the industry will reach about 5.9 trillion yuan, and there is still ample room for growth.

2016-2021 forecast of total industrial output value of fine chemical industry (Unit: 100 million yuan)