This week, the price of acrylonitrile rose and then fell back. At the beginning of the week, due to reduced supply in the East China region and considering recent cost pressures and long-term pre holiday stocking expectations, suppliers continued to push up prices. However, the follow-up of spot transactions has been slow, and it is expected that the northern maintenance equipment will gradually recover next week. In addition, there is no significant increase in overall demand, and as the weekend approaches, the market will stop rising and fall back.
As of September 12th, the mainstream tank discharge price in East China ports has increased by 8400-8500 yuan/ton, a decrease of 50 yuan/ton from last week; Short distance delivery to the Shandong market costs 8350-8450 yuan/ton, an increase of 50 yuan/ton compared to last week.
Supply side
The newly built 260000 ton acrylonitrile unit B line of Jilin Petrochemical’s transformation and upgrading project was successfully put into operation on August 13th, and the A line was also put into operation recently. As a result, the total domestic acrylonitrile production capacity base has been adjusted to 5.42 million tons per year. Therefore, this week’s production increased while the capacity utilization rate still decreased; The 520000 ton acrylonitrile unit of Zhejiang Petrochemical is currently operating at around 75% load. It is planned to undergo maintenance on one unit for about 10 days starting from September 15th, when the load will drop to 50%; Sinochem Quanzhou Acrylonitrile Plant Shutdown; Tianchen Qixiang’s 130000 ton acrylonitrile plant is scheduled to restart in mid September.
According to statistics, as of September 11th, the weekly capacity utilization rate of domestic acrylonitrile factories has dropped to 71.90%, which is -0.95% compared to the same period last week. The weekly output is about 81900 tons, an increase of 400 tons compared to the previous cycle. The total inventory is about 41000 tons, an increase of 0.18 million tons from last week.
Increased demand:
This week, the capacity utilization rates of major downstream industries of acrylonitrile have all shown an increase, among which the ABS capacity utilization rate is 70.0%, an increase of 1.0% compared to last week, and the Tianjin plant has shown a negative trend; The capacity utilization rate of acrylic fiber enterprises was 61.59%, an increase of 0.93% compared to last week; Daqing Petrochemical restarts; The utilization rate of acrylamide production capacity was 55.58%, an increase of 0.61% compared to last week, indicating a slight increase in overall demand.
Cost support:
The cost of raw materials for acrylonitrile production has not changed much during the cycle, and upstream propylene prices are running at a high level. At the same time, acrylonitrile prices are fluctuating at a high level, and the production loss situation has improved this week. According to statistics, the average production cost of acrylonitrile this week was 9024 yuan/ton, a month on month increase of+0.20%. The average profit of acrylonitrile production during the same period was -474 yuan/ton, with a month on month increase of 211 yuan/ton.
In the later forecast, the acrylonitrile market is expected to be in a favorable atmosphere of high cost, low inventory, and reduced supply in the first half of September. However, the above positive support is limited and variable, coupled with insufficient follow-up of long-term demand, the improvement of market supply and demand relationship is still difficult to sustain. In the second half of the month, the northern maintenance facilities will gradually resume, and at the same time, the demand for stocking up before the National Day holiday will also be activated. The news is mixed, and the market may once again fall into a stalemate.
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