15th China Hangzhou chemicalFibre Forum(2016)

2016 PX-PTA market forecast
——Gao Younian from Sinopec

2016-03-24 11:08:21

Mr. Gao firstly introduced the environment of 2016. He expects PX-PTA-polyester market balance and profits to improve in 2016, but more volatile. Product prices are low, supply/demand balance improves, capital and exchange rate environment reversed, will inventory builds up again? Textile and apparel consumption growth increased in Europe and America in 2015 but stabilized in China. Listed textile and apparel enterprises indicated steady operations.

Polyester supply-demand relationship will slightly improve in the future. Rebounding real estate sales will boost textile-polyester consumption. Polyester inventory increased by more than 10 days in 2015, but controllable. With no new PTA capacity during 2015-2017, PTA market may be constructing the bottom. PTA overcapacity eases based on shutdown of Xianglu and other long-term idled capacities. PTA margin recovered to breakeven level from Oct 2015 with PTA inventory lowered to rational level since H2 2015.

As to PX section, pressure from new capacity is small in 2016, but may increase in 2017. World refining development and processing structure limits aromatics output. PX supply turns loose from Q3 and inventory slowly increases but loose supply will come to an end amid intensive turnarounds in Q2 and Q3, 2016.
PX margin will see obvious recovery.