2022 China PE Consumption Features
From 2018 to 2022, the global PE demand growth rate saw rises and falls, and China was the main consumer. The CAGR of China’s PE apparent consumption volume was 6.73% in the recent five years. The export volume is estimated to rise by 27.15% Y-O-Y. Meanwhile, the overall PE consumption will change limitedly in terms of structure and regions. SCI reckons that China’s PE consumption may continue to inch up in 2023.
Consumption structure: Film industry took up the largest proportion of PE consumption.
As for the consumption structure, the PE consumption from the film industry took a larger proportion compared with that in last year, while the proportion of injection industry and blow molding industry declined Y-O-Y although they were still main consumers of PE. The proportion of the pipe industry declined mainly due to falling orders and output caused by the underperformed real estate industry.
More details in SCI’s 2022-2023 China PE Market Annual Report
Consumption Region: East China, North China and South China remained top 3.
In 2022, China’s PE consumption was mainly in East China, North China and South China, almost unchanged from last year. The consumption in East China inched down, while that in South China improved slightly. Compared with the consumption in 2018, it increased in Southwest China and Central China, which was related to the local favorable policies.
As for the exports, from 2018 to 2022, China’s export volume fluctuated within the range of 220-300kt, while it improved significantly from 2021 to 2022. In 2022, the export volume rose greatly in the first half of the year mainly due to the large price spreads between different regions. In addition, the ocean freight declined gradually, granting export arbitrage opportunities for China. Therefore, China’s PE producers and traders proactively expanded their export business, pushing up the export volume notably. Some Chinese-made resources were exported to South America, Southeast Asia etc. In the second half of the year, with the global economic growth slowing down, the demand weakened, and the price kept falling, dampening the export willingness.
As the PE demand is closely related to the daily life, the large amount of PE consumption will continue to push up the overall demand slightly, if there are no dramatic changes in the consumption habits. Specifically, the replenishments are expected to rise in 2023 due to the falling inventory at downstream user in 2022. Meanwhile, with the impacts of the pandemic weakening, the demand for PE products will gradually improve.
On the whole, SCI reckons that China’s PE consumption will be supported by the rigid demand, and the overall consumption volume is likely to inch up continuously.
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