CPL Shortage Becomes Bottleneck in Nylon Production

CPL supply has always fallen short of demand in China, while AH salt has met the needs of domestic nylon producers since 1999.

China began to produce CPL from the end of the 1950s. The total output of CPL has grown year after year from 10,000 tons in 1993 to 37,000 tons in 1994, 67,000 tons

According to the State Statistics Bureau (SSB), however, the production capacity of 86 nylon producers already reached 800,000 tons at the end of 2003, and is expected to rise to 1.05-1.10 million tons in the next two years. As a result, the country must import great quantities of CPL every year.

More than 65% of the CPL nylon producers consume are imported. Incomplete statistics indicated that CPL imports rose from 320,600 tons in 2002 to 376,000 tons in 2003.

Due to lower demands among nylon fabric mills and nylon cord factories on the Mainland, the capacity utilization of nylon plants was 68.8% in 2003, when the output of nylon totaled about 550,000 tons.

Experts say that China will still be short of 320,000-350,000 tons of CPL until 2005, and the shortage is predicted to worsen to 430,000 tons by 2010. It will probably be difficult for China to solve the troubles of CPL shortage in the near future, experts added. Of course, import duties on nylon and its raw materials are also unfavorable factors preventing further development of the nylon industry.

Duties on imported CPL can be retained at the 9% level without any change in accordance with the promise China made when it joined the WTO. However, the import duties on nylon will be reduced to 5% from 2004. Undoubtedly, all of this will cause one disaster after another for nylon producers on the Mainland, experts consider.