From 2015-2021, China’s bisphenol A market, with growing production and relatively stable development. 2021 China’s bisphenol A production is expected to reach about 1.7 million tons, and the comprehensive opening rate of major bisphenol A devices is about 77%, which is at a high level. It is expected that starting from 2022, with the under-construction bisphenol A devices put into operation one after another, the annual production is expected to gradually increase. 2016-2020 China’s bisphenol A market imports slowly growing, the import dependence of the bisphenol A market is close to 30%. It is expected that with the significant increase in domestic production capacity in the future, the import dependence of bisphenol A is expected to continue to decline.

Bisphenol A market downstream demand structure is concentrated, mainly used for PC and epoxy resin, almost half of each proportion. 2021 is expected to bisphenol A apparent consumption of about 2.19 million tons, an increase of 2% compared with 2020. In the future, as the downstream PC and epoxy resin new devices are put into operation, the market demand for bisphenol A is expected to increase significantly.

PC new production capacity is more, pulling the bisphenol A market demand growth. China is an importer of polycarbonate, import substitution needs urgent. According to BCF statistics, in 2020, China’s PC production of 819,000 tons, down 19.6% year-on-year, imports of 1.63 million tons, up 1.9%, exports of about 251,000 tons, apparent consumption of 2.198 million tons, down 7.0% year-on-year, the self-sufficiency rate of only 37.3%, China’s urgent demand for PC imports.

From January to October 2021, China’s PC production of 702,600 tons, down 0.38% year-on-year, domestic PC imports of 1.088 million tons, down 10.0% year-on-year, exports of 254,000 tons, an increase of 41.1% year-on-year, with China’s new PC production capacity has been put into production, the import dependence is expected to continue to rise.

The wind power industry, electronic materials and other industries drive epoxy resin to continue to expand. The main application areas of domestic epoxy resin are coating, composite materials, electronic and electrical appliances and adhesive industries, and the application ratio of each part in recent years basically remains stable, accounting for 35%, 30%, 26% and 9% respectively.

It is expected that in the next 5 years, among the many downstream applications of epoxy resin, epoxy resin for composite materials and capital construction, will become the main area to support the growth rate of epoxy resin output. The increasing demand for wind power, the construction and maintenance of high speed railways, highways, subways and airports in the urbanization construction will drive the development of epoxy resin. Especially with the promotion of “One Belt, One Road”, the demand for epoxy resin will be greatly increased.

PCB industry is the main downstream application of epoxy resin in electrical and electronic field, the core material of PCB is copper clad board, epoxy resin accounts for about 15% of the cost of copper clad board. With the rapid evolution of new generation information technology such as big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, 5G, etc., as the basic material of electronic industry, the demand and growth rate of copper clad board is expected to be expanding year by year.

Bisphenol A market is in a high boom cycle, we assume that the downstream demand for bisphenol A market is put into production on schedule, the current bisphenol A market downstream epoxy resin has 1.54 million tons of capacity under construction, PC has 1.425 million tons of capacity under construction, these capacities are put into production in the next 2-3 years, the demand for bisphenol A market has a strong pull. Supply, bisphenol A own supply to maintain reasonable growth, the current bisphenol A production capacity under construction 2.83 million tons, these capacities are put into operation in 2-3 years, after the industry growth is mainly based on integrated development, a single set of devices put into operation alone to reduce the situation, the industry growth rate down to a reasonable level.

2021-2030 China’s bisphenol A industry still has 5.52 million tons of projects under construction / year, 2.73 times the capacity of 2.025 million tons / year at the end of 2020, it can be seen that the future bisphenol A market competition is more intense, the contradiction between supply and demand in the market will be reversed, especially for new entrants, the project operation and marketing environment will become increasingly intense.

By the end of 2020 month domestic bisphenol A in production 11 enterprises, production capacity of 2.025 million tons, of which 1.095 million tons of foreign enterprises, 630,000 tons of private, joint venture capacity of 300,000 tons, respectively, accounting for 54%, 31%, 15%. From 2021 to 2030, China’s bisphenol A market planning, proposed projects under construction with a total capacity of 5.52 million tons, production capacity is still concentrated in East China, but with the expansion of the downstream PC industry, South China, Northeast, Central China and other areas of capacity growth, when the domestic bisphenol A market capacity distribution coverage will be more balanced, while with the gradual commissioning of the project, bisphenol A market supply is less than the status of demand will also gradually The situation that the supply of BPA market is less than the demand will be gradually alleviated, and a surplus of resources is expected.

2010-2020 along with the expansion of bisphenol A market capacity, production shows a significant growth trend, during the capacity compound increment rate of 14.3%, production compound growth rate of 17.1%, the industry start-up rate is mainly affected by the market price, industry profit and loss and the time of commissioning of new devices, which reached a peak start-up rate of 85.6% in 2019. 2021, along with the new bisphenol A Bisphenol A market oversupply is expected to intensify in 2021-2025, the overall start rate of China’s bisphenol A market is expected to show a downward trend, resulting in a decline in the start rate for the following reasons: 1. 2021-2025 China’s bisphenol A devices added year by year, while the production release later than capacity, resulting in 2021-2025 start rate decline; 2. Price downward pressure is huge, the industry’s high profit situation gradually disappeared, subject to production costs and profits, the loss of time during the production intention is low; 3. There is an annual routine maintenance of enterprises, ranging from 30-45 days, enterprise maintenance affects the industry start-up rate.

In the future, the data of significant growth in production capacity as well as a decline in the start-up rate is expected, the risk of future project operation has increased significantly. Industry concentration, the CR4 capacity accounted for 68% in 2020, down to 27% in 2030, can indicate a significant increase in bisphenol A industry participants, the leading enterprises in the industry will have a significant decline in the status; at the same time, because the bisphenol A market downstream demand is mainly concentrated in epoxy resins and polycarbonate, the field distribution is concentrated and the number of large customers is limited, the degree of competition in the future bisphenol A market intensified, the enterprise In order to ensure market share, the designation of sales strategy will be more flexible.

Market supply and demand, after 2021, the bisphenol A market will again usher in the trend of expansion, especially in the next 10 years, bisphenol A production capacity compound growth rate of 9.9%, while the downstream consumption compound growth rate of 7.3%, bisphenol A market overcapacity, oversupply contradictions highlighted, part of the poor competitiveness of bisphenol A production enterprises may be faced with the problem of insufficient follow-up starts, device utilization.

In the future capacity growth and start-up rate decline in the data is expected, the flow of resources for future projects and the direction of downstream consumption has become the main focus of existing and future projects.

The downstream consumption of Chinese bisphenol A market mainly consists of epoxy resin and polycarbonate. 2015-2018 epoxy resin consumption accounted for the largest share, but along with the expansion of PC production capacity, epoxy resin consumption accounted for a declining trend. 2019-2020 PC production capacity concentrated expansion, while epoxy resin production capacity is relatively stable, PC began to account for more than epoxy resin, PC consumption in 2020 accounted for up to 49%, becoming the largest downstream share. China currently has excess capacity of basic epoxy resin, high quality and special resin technology is more difficult to break through, but by the development of wind power, automotive, electrical and electronic, infrastructure construction, basic epoxy resin and polycarbonate consumption to maintain a good growth momentum. 2021-2025, although high quality and special epoxy resin and PC synchronous expansion, but the PC expansion scale is larger, and PC single consumption ratio is much higher than Epoxy resin, so it is expected to further expand the PC consumption ratio in 2025 will reach 52%, so from the downstream consumption structure, PC device for the future bisphenol A project focus of attention. But it should be noted that the current PC new devices upstream more supporting bisphenol A, so the direction of epoxy resin still needs to be an important supplementary focus.

As for the main consumer markets, there are no large BPA producers and no large downstream consumers in Northwest and Northeast China, so no key analysis will be done here. East China is expected to turn from undersupply to oversupply in 2023-2024. North China is always oversupplied. Central China always maintains a certain supply gap. South China market turns from undersupply to oversupply in 2022-2023 and to severe oversupply in 2025. It is expected that by 2025, the BPA market in China will be dominated by the consumption of peripheral resources and low price competition to seize the market. It is suggested that BPA enterprises can consider export as the main consumption direction when considering the peripheral and low price outflow to the main consumption areas.