Basic chemical industry

3. Technical barriers.

The chemical industry has high requirements on production process and technology, and the production process of different kinds of chemical products is different. Small differences in the parameters of the chemical reaction process can cause large differences in product safety, quality, energy consumption and yield. For example, the synthetic ammonia plant has the characteristics of high temperature and high pressure reaction and complex process flow, and can achieve continuous and safe production through key processes such as gas full low conversion, alkane/alkylation net gas, and pressure change decarburization. Therefore, only chemical enterprises with rich experience in production organization, mature process and technical team can continue to maintain a dominant position.

In the storage and transportation of chemical products, especially for hazardous chemicals, professional storage and transportation equipment must be used, and it must be operated by qualified personnel in strict accordance with safe production and safe transportation regulations. The storage and transportation of chemical products is one of the important links in the safe production of chemical enterprises.

Therefore, enterprises engaged in the production of chemical products need to have reliable complete sets of production equipment, accumulate rich production experience, and have a large number of experienced technical teams and engineering forces. All these set up high technical barriers for potential entrants.

4. Channel barrier.

The downstream customers of large chemical enterprises are mostly large and medium-sized production enterprises, which strictly control the quality of raw materials to ensure the stability and reliability of product quality. Suppliers with mature technology and a certain production scale can gain more first-mover advantages by occupying the market first, often maintaining a continuous cooperative relationship with customers. In addition, the quality of chemical products is relatively high, and most product sales have certain regional characteristics, which requires suppliers to have stable product supply capacity and timely after-sales service, and maintain good cooperative relations with customers. With the first-mover advantage of products and stable purchase and sales channels, the strategic cooperative relationship established between manufacturers and downstream enterprises often has a large degree of exclusivity, and if new competitors want to enter the industry, they will pay greater channel costs.

(5) Industry advantages and disadvantages

1. Favorable factors

1) Policy factors: In recent years, in order to cooperate with and promote the structural adjustment of the national economy, the relevant state authorities have issued a series of guidelines and policy measures, so that the chemical industry as a whole ushered in a new situation of development reform and structural optimization and upgrading. From the perspective of industrial policy, the state encourages enterprises in the industry to accelerate technological upgrading by focusing on the improvement of product quality, supports the development of basic chemical products from industrial grade to electronic grade, pharmaceutical grade and food grade, and promotes the significant improvement of the quality level of bulk basic organic chemical raw materials, key synthetic materials and special fine chemicals. At the same time, it supports the implementation of technological transformation in the fields of raw material optimization, energy saving and consumption reduction to improve the overall development level and economic benefits of enterprises.

In the future, the chemical industry will further develop to the advanced model of refinement, continuity and scale, and products with high technological added value, high environmental protection and safety and wide application fields will become the main source of profit for the leading chemical enterprises in the industry; Chemical enterprises with high pollution, high energy consumption, backward production capacity and production process equipment will be accelerated. The change trend of the above industry policy will strongly promote the integration and development of the chemical industry.

2) Market factors: With the continuous growth of our national economy, the scale of the overall chemical industry has maintained a stable expansion rate. It is expected that in the next few years, the total output value of our country's chemical industry will further increase the proportion of the world, and most chemical products, especially new chemical materials and high-end special chemicals, will have stable market demand. The steady growth of total consumption, the continuous improvement of refinement rate and the upgrading of industrial structure are all favorable factors to ensure the growth of market demand.

2. Unfavorable factors

On the one hand, because the production process of chemical products is prone to produce harmful waste substances, some products and waste are also hazardous chemicals, the competent authorities for different product categories, from the process design, licensed production, production, supply and marketing, storage, transportation and other aspects of the chemical enterprises to implement stricter regulatory measures. With the deepening of supply-side reform since 2016, industrial structure adjustment and environmental supervision have continued to increase the operating requirements and pressure on chemical enterprises. In the short term, the continuous investment in safety, environmental protection and industrial upgrading has caused no small pressure on the improvement of the operation and profit of some chemical enterprises.