Guangzhou Vanlead Invested 400 Million for Waste Tires Recycling

In order to protect the environment and eliminate the pollution of waste tires, Guangzhou Vanlead Environmental Protection Technology decided to build a 30kt/a waste tire recycling project. Waste tires will become a kind of resources. The project attracted an investment of about 397.39 million RMB. The annual processing volume of waste tires will be 30kt. The waste tires can be resolved into some chemicals. The annual output of fuel oil product, carbon black and steel wire will be 12.60kt, 9.90kt and 3.30kt.

According to the statistics released by Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC), the demand volume for NR worldwide (including non-ANRPC countries) reached 7,486kt in the first 7 months, up 0.40% from the same period last year. The consumption volume was 6,838kt in the first 7 months. The supply shortage was 648kt. It was predicted that the NR supply shortage would drop to 517kt in August.

In the first 10 months, the NR consumption volume will reach 10,723kt, up 1.10% from the same period in 2016. The consumption volume in entire 2017 will be 12,833kt, up 1.20% from the 12,600kt in 2016.

Nguyen Ngoc Bich, Chairman of ANRPC, said that the NR spot prices would not decrease because of the favorable short supply. The NR price rebounded gradually in the first 3 weeks of July, followed by the price recover of crude oil. The price spread between the STR 20 and SMR 20 narrowed. However, the NR inventories increased in the futures market in the last week of July, and the NR prices were influenced. The NR prices slumped in the major spot markets in Thailand and Malaysia.

In order to promote the use of NR, Thai government encouraged all industries in Thailand to use NR. Some departments and government divisions were suggested to consume NR. After that, the NR consumption volume in Thailand increased from 362kt to 390kt, up 7.70%. Office of Thai Prime Minister announced that 9 government divisions would purchase NR for road construction and product manufacturing with a budget of 16,900,000 THB. It may stimulate the demand for NR in Thailand.

Up to August 2017, there were 11 emulsion styrene butadiene rubber (ESBR) producers in China, with the total capacity at 1,470kt/a. Data at all the 11 producers were monitored by SCI.

According to the data, the total SBR output in August reached 93.40kt. That was up 36.15% M-O-M and up 45.94% Y-O-Y. The output from January to August totaled 630kt, up 7.69% from the same period last year.

The total SBR output will remain unchanged in September, which will still be at a high level. The scheduled output will be 93.10kt in September, down 0.30kt or 0.32% from August. Hereinto, the scheduled output of SBR 1502 and 1502E will be 49.30kt, down 0.80kt from August. The scheduled output of SBR 1500E will be 12.75kt, up 0.05kt. The output of oil-extended SBR will be 31.05kt, up 0.45kt from August.

China’s SBR industry underwent a destocking process in H1, 2017. Both the output and import volume in Q3 of 2017 decreased greatly from Q2. With the price fluctuations, the SBR industry attracted players in the natural rubber futures market to seek arbitrage and speculation, which was a bullish factor for the synthetic rubber industry. With the environmental protection inspections, the high-temperature vacation and capital shortage, the feedstock inventory was not high at the downstream plants. Thus, the SBR production was boosted in August. However, the price increase and the restocking activity led to short supply of SBR. Yet, some small SBR producers were seriously impacted by the environmental protection inspections, and the high output at some SBR producers resulted in anxiety of the market trend. SCI suggests that players can operate according to the inventory changes.