In the past decade, the polyester filament industry has continued its high capacity expansion cycle, and the expansion area has gradually spread from the traditional industrial base in Zhejiang to the surrounding provinces. Although the growth rate of polyester filament capacity has slowed down significantly in 2024, new polyester filament capacity will still be put into production every year in the next five years, of which Jiangsu is expected to put into production more than 4 million tons, and the supply ratio in Jiangsu is constantly increasing.
2023 is still the peak period of polyester production. By the end of the year, the domestic polyester industry had added a total of 11.41 million tons/year, an increase of 5.795 million tons/year compared with the same period of last year, with a year-on-year increase of 103%. As shown in the following figure, polyester filament is the main force of polyester production. In 2023, the domestic polyester filament production capacity increased by more than 4 million tons, up 48.3% year-on-year, followed by polyester bottle chips. In recent years, the production speed of polyester bottle chips has been accelerating, and the production scale this year exceeded 4 million tons/year.
In terms of breakdown, in recent years, polyester filament production areas have gradually spread from south to north, from Zhejiang to Jiangsu and western regions. As shown in Figure 2, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian are still the main production and sales areas of polyester filament market. However, with the continuous expansion of production scale in Jiangsu, the supply ratio in Jiangsu has also increased. At present, the supply in Jiangsu accounts for more than one-third of the country's total, and the commissioning of Xinjiang Yuxin device also marks the breakthrough of zero production capacity of polyester filament in northwest China. In 2024, the speed of polyester filament production capacity will obviously slow down. At present, according to public data, a total of 1.1 million tons of production capacity will be put into production, including 500,000 tons in Zhejiang and 300,000 tons in Jiangsu. A set of 300,000 tons of equipment is expected to be put into the market in Anhui at the end of the year. In 2024, the new production capacity is expected to be reduced by 75.1% year-on-year, and the utilization rate of existing equipment in the industry will be improved.
Throughout the past five years, compared with the output of the main polyester filament producing areas, Zhejiang Province stands out as the main area for polyester filament supply. However, as shown in Figure 3, in 2022, due to public health incidents, the production and sales in Zhejiang were affected. In April of the first half of the year, logistics and transportation in Haining, Jiaxing, Tongxiang and other areas were restricted, which led to the reduction of supply. In the second half of the year, especially at the end of the year, the frequent public health incidents led to the semi-paralysis of industry supply and demand, and mainstream manufacturers took the lead in reducing burdens and avoiding risks. Therefore, Jiangsu In 2023, the new production capacity in Zhejiang was 800,000 tons, accounting for less than 20% of the total production scale, but the capacity utilization rate of the plant was significantly improved. Therefore, the overall supply in Zhejiang increased rapidly in 2023, with an annual supply of nearly 21.7 million tons, accounting for 67.1% of the total supply, but the proportion decreased by about 7% compared with last year.
In 2023, polyester filament production projects were mostly concentrated in Jiangsu, especially in northern Jiangsu, such as Siyang and Suqian. According to statistics, the production scale in Jiangsu accounted for 78.7% of the total production in China. With the gradual transfer of polyester filament production projects to Jiangsu in recent years, the supply growth rate in Jiangsu was obvious. In 2023, the supply accounted for 25% of the total supply in China, up about 2% year-on-year.
As mentioned above, the new scale of domestic polyester filament will slow down in 2024, and it is estimated that there is only one project scale of 300,000 tons in Jiangsu. However, according to the analysis of the project scale of enterprise industrial parks, there are still more than 4 million tons of production plans in Jiangsu from 2025 to 2029, and the future polyester filament production capacity will mainly be concentrated in Jiangsu, Fujian, Anhui and other regions. At the same time, enterprises in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian with small production capacity or backward equipment are expected to withdraw. Therefore, the proportion of production capacity supply in Jiangsu will gradually increase to around 35% in the future, which is expected to increase by 10 percentage points compared with 2023.