Global Polyolefin Industry Grows Rapidly, and Asian Market Comes under the Spotlight — The 21st FLEXPO took place in Bangkok

By Tina Hu and Frank Ren

The global polyolefin market will continue growing, but the focus of world market will gradually move from North America and Europe to Asia and the Middle East. Asia has become a major market for the global polyolefin industry, where the petrochemical industry has been booming thanks particularly to the rapid growth of China’s economy. After successfully holding the 2009 Korean conference, 2010 Beijing conference and 2011 Shanghai conference, Chemical Market Resources (CMR), China National Chemical Information Center (CNCIC) and Petroleum Technical Institute of Thailand (PTIT) jointly held the 2012 (21st) global polyolefin and elastomer conference (FLEXPO 2012) in Bangkok on October 17 to October 19. Over 22 professionals from global petrochemical companies like Sinopec, PTT, SCG,  Ineos, Dow Chemical, Clariant, Grace, JPP, IRPC and TSRC got together to look at the future and technological prospect of the global and Asian polyolefin industries. During the two-and-a-half-day meeting, corporate representatives and technologists from the global polyolefin value chain discussed the Asian and even the global polyolefin markets and the innovative approach to the development of technology and catalyst through intensive and face-to-face exchange. Some of the highlights during the meeting are described below for those interested readers.  

Asian polyolefin industry continues growing rapidly

The polyolefin market in ASEAN region has been growing over the past years. According to the SCG forecasts, the market demand for PE in ASEAN region will grow 5.5% annually in the next four years from 2012 to 2015 and the PE output will decrease yearly from 15.5% in 2011 to 0.7% in 2015. The newly added PE capacity in ASEAN region mainly came from an Exxon Mobil plant in Singapore, where the HDPE/LLDPE capacity is 650 000 tons per year and LDPE capacity 650 000 tons per year. Between 2012 and 2015, the ASEAN’s market demand for PP will grow at an annual average rate of 5.8% and PP output will see a rather high annual growth of about 7.9%. The additional capacity in 2012 - 2013 will come from a 510 000 t/a Exxon Mobile plant in Singapore and a 250 000 t/a plant of Indonesian National Petroleum Company. A large number of new polyolefin plants have been put into operation in succession in Singapore and Thailand. Three resin makers in Singapore currently exports polyolefin products to Malaysia, namely, Exxon Mobil, Polyolefin Company and Chevron Phillips Company, and PE and PP capacities in Singapore exceed 2 million tons and 1 million tons respectively. PTT Chemical and SCG in Thailand have built new polyolefin plants, thus increasing the PE and PP capacities in the country to 3.6 million tons and 1.95 million tons respectively.  
   Both China and India still have a huge demand for PE. According to the statistics from China’s leading chemical information provider CNCIC, the per capita demand for PE in both China and India between 2010 and 2015 will grow 40.9% per year, compared with the growth of merely 2% in the US. Therefore, the major potential markets for PE in the future will concentrate in the emerging countries in Asia.  
   It is predicted that the global HDPE capacity in 2015 will reach 59 million tons. The PE capacity in Europe and North America will not grow substantially. Thanks to the strong demand and low raw material cost, the new PE capacities in Asia-Pacific region (including China and India) and the Middle East will account for over 85% of the global total. In due course, China, India and the Middle East will become three new petrochemical giants in the world, forming an iron triangle in Asia and reshaping the layout of the global PE industry.
   With respect to LDPE, it is predicted that the new LDPE capacity worldwide between 2010 and 2015 will approximate 3.8 million t/a given the size of plants being built or to be built worldwide. The global total LDPE capacity in 2015 is expected to reach about 26 million t/a leaving out of account the closed plants, and the annual average growth rate of LDPE worldwide will approximate 2.9% between 2010 and 2015. The capacity growth mainly concentrates in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.  
   In recent years, thanks to the skyrocketing demand for film and injection mold, LLDPE production and demand have been growing rapidly to such extent that LLDPE has become the fastest growing variety of PE product and now the second largest PE product in the world, right after HDPE. It is predicted that the global LLDPE capacity will increase by about 7.7 million tons in the next five years and the global LLDPE capacity will reach 49 million tons in 2015. In the next years, the global LLDPE capacity growth will concentrate in Asia-Pacific region (including China and India) and the Middle East, which will account for nearly 90% of the new capacities worldwide.    
   Between 2002 and 2010, PP capacity grew rapidly because the global PP demand has been growing so fast that a large number of petrochemical companies invested in PP projects, but at the same time companies were forced to reduce the capacity ratio due to the consistently high material costs to companies and the limited market demand. Worldwide, the operating rate of PP capacity was 95.5% in 2002 and reduced to 76.7% in 2010. Since the Asian market demand for PP is still growing, especially when both China and India have became strong drivers behind PP demand growth, major companies in the international market are still fond of investing in new projects. In particular, around the year 2010, a large number of new PP plants worldwide have been put into operation in succession recent, thus driving the PP capacity ratio down to about 74% in 2011.  
   Between 2010 and 2015, there are about 60 new PP plants to be built worldwide, half of which have individual capacity of over 100 000 tons. Geographically, over 90% of new PP plants worldwide concentrate in Asia and the Middle East.

Polyolefin catalyst is ever-changing

Along with the growth of polyolefin industry, polyolefin catalyst has undergone a series of successful improvements, resulting in a situation where Z-N catalyst, metallocene catalyst and post-transition metallic catalyst are developing hand in hand to constantly drive the rapid growth of polyolefin industry. Z-N catalyst will become serialized and high-performance on the basis of high activity and high directionality, with higher-performance new products being constantly developed. The application of metallocene and non-metallocene single active center catalyst in the field of PP is going deeper, with a view to realizing the industrialization of technology and initiating a huge market for general-purpose products.  
   At this meeting all famous multinationals brought their latest products, especially the FI catalyst from Mitsui Chemical, HYAMPPTM catalyst from Grace, CONSISTA polypropylene catalysis technology from Dow Chemical, Innovene S from Ineos, polypropylene catalyst from Clariant and single-point polymerization catalyst from JPP.
   Chinese companies have also made remarkable achievements. Over the past years, Sinopec developed a number of new-type polyolefin resin specifications and has made outstanding achievements in olefin polymerization process, catalyst improvement and application of high-efficient nucleation agent. Sinopec has developed a polypropylene catalyst HA series with activity more than 200 000 times, and ND polypropylene catalyst and high-activity BCE catalyst developed by Sinopec have been tested successfully for the industrialization purposes. With respect to polyolefin polymerization process, Sinopec was the first company in the country to develop asymmetric electron donor and third-generation polypropylene circle pipe technology. Large-sized gas-phase polyethylene technology has been successfully applied at a large scale. Based on resin structure characterization and molecular structural design, special material for use in polyethylene gas pipe and production of auto bumper directly through polymerization unit were successfully developed. PetroChina has made remarkable progress in development of polyolefin catalyst. The first proprietary PSP—01 ball-type polypropylene catalyst of PetroChina was successfully tested on the 100 000 t/a polypropylene plant of Fushun Petrochemical Co., Ltd in 2010, with two types of special material successfully developed. It is worth noting that in recent years many Chinese companies have been exploring coal-to-olefin industrialization technology, as three coal-to-olefin demonstration plants of Datang Duolun MTP, Shenhua Baotou MTO and Shenhua Ningmei MTP were put into operation in succession in 2010, giving rise to the coal-to-olefin industry in the country. At this meeting, DMTO technology and catalyst from CAS Dalian Institute of Chemistry and Physics was also the focus of attention. The advent of new olefin production process has laid a solid foundation for the development of Chinese polyolefin materials towards diversification, which is believed to eventually lead to a situation where a variety of materials development roadmaps compete with each other.