Some experts said at the IHS Markit World Petrochemical Online Conference (WPC) 2020 Special Chemicals and Intermediates Forum that the new coronavirus pandemic will lead to a short-term disruption of the engineering plastics, linear alpha-olefins (LAO), acrylonitrile and acrylate markets. The impact will continue until early 2021.

On WPC, Brendan Dooley, director of IHS Markit's global engineering plastics business, said that in fact, the global engineering plastics market is fairly balanced in supply and demand, but the coronavirus epidemic has caused a major impact, which will be mainly reflected in 2020 and early 2021. The major investments announced by some engineering plastics companies are not expected to be cancelled, but the completion of new investments and ongoing capacity increase projects will slow down.

Dooley said that due to capacity building in recent years, the polycarbonate (PC) market has been oversupplied and there is no need to increase production capacity within 15 years, but the global spread of the coronavirus epidemic has made the situation worse. It is expected that the polycarbonate operating rate will remain at a low 60% Level, the next five years will be integrated in the production plant. Nylon 6,6 is facing a shortage of intermediate adiponitrile (ADN), but a large number of new ADN production capacity will be put into use one after another, which may cause the price of nylon 6,6 to fall.

Adam Bland, executive director of IHS Markit's specialty chemicals department, said that due to the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic, IHS Markit has reduced the annual global linear alpha-olefin (LAO) consumption growth rate from 4.3% to nearly 3.5% from 2019 to 2024 %. Brand said that it is predicted that the global LAO demand will reach 7.3 million tons by 2024, but affected by the global spread of the coronavirus epidemic, it is estimated that the global LAO demand will be about 7 million tons in 2024.

Simon Garmston, executive director of IHS Markit's acrylonitrile business, said that it is too early to quantify the impact of the coronavirus epidemic on the world acrylonitrile market in 2020, but demand is expected to resume growth in 2021. It is predicted that from 2019 to 2024, the supply and demand of the industry will gradually balance, and the demand for acrylonitrile will continue to grow, and the productivity is expected to gradually decline.

"In spite of the rampant coronavirus epidemic, all major capacity expansion projects are still active." In the US hydraulic fracturing industry, the consumption of acrylamide, a derivative of acrylonitrile, will be reduced by 30% to 40%, once the oil price The recovery of oil and gas production activities will rebound. From 2022, the acrylonitrile market will return to a growth trend.

Denis Poussin, director of IHS Markit, said that the coronavirus epidemic may increase the risk of uncontrolled market reaction to correct the imbalance in the acrylic ester market caused by overcapacity in previous years. The economic recession caused by the spread of the epidemic is expected to affect demand in Western Europe, where the demand for butyl acrylate is expected to decline by 6.5%. The second quarter of 2020 will be particularly difficult, and the acrylic ester market is expected to start on the right track in the fourth quarter of this year.

Source from CCIN