Operation analysis of China's chemical fiber industry in 2022 and outlook in 2023

2022 is a very extraordinary year, and the internal and external development environment facing China's chemical fiber industry is becoming more complex and severe. Under the overlapping impact of multiple complex factors such as repeated epidemics, geopolitical conflicts, and high inflation, the global economic downturn is obvious, and the "triple pressure" of domestic demand contraction, supply shock, and weaker expectations has also increased, and the operation of China's chemical fiber industry has encountered unprecedented challenges. High crude oil prices fluctuate significantly, downstream demand continues to be depressed, resulting in a decline in the industry load, profitability pressure is more prominent. However, under the overall severe industry situation, the operation of the chemical fiber industry is still no shortage of bright spots. The domestic carbon fiber industry still maintains a high prosperity, and the market demand continues to increase; Under the guidance of the national new development concept and the "double carbon" goal, the scale of bio-based fiber industry has maintained rapid growth; The pace of research and development of differentiated and functional fibers is accelerating, and enterprises with good product development, good brand and high degree of internationalization are relatively less affected by market fluctuations; Exports still maintained a good growth trend, and the export volume of chemical fiber reached a new high.

First, the basic operation of the chemical fiber industry in 2022

(1) The production of chemical fiber slowed down and the output grew negatively

In 2022, the production and marketing pressure of the chemical fiber industry will increase, and the overall on-load will decrease significantly compared with 2021. In the first three quarters, there were two obvious load reduction periods in the industry from March to April and from July to August. The former was due to sporadic epidemics in many places, especially in Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta, which had a greater impact on logistics transportation and internal circulation consumption demand. The latter is due to the traditional off-season, facing the pressure of high inventory and weak demand, superimposed in some areas of high temperature power rationing. During this period, product inventories continued to rise, basically reaching a high in mid-to-late July. Entering the "gold nine" traditional peak season, power rationing measures relaxed, cancelled, the industry chain has certain expectations for the peak season, so downstream demand has improved, the industry load has rebounded, but the second half of September returned to caution, in general, the peak season performance is not as good as in previous years. After mid-November, with the adjustment of the epidemic prevention and control policy, the infection of factory workers increased, resulting in a significant decline in the load of upstream and downstream industries in the industrial chain.

According to the statistics of the China Chemical Fiber Association, the production of chemical fiber in 2022 is 64.88 million tons, a slight decrease of 0.55% year-on-year (Table 1), which is the first negative growth of chemical fiber production in nearly 40 years. Among them, except for viscose filament and acrylic fiber production increased by 7.45% and 16.70%, respectively, the output of other main products showed negative growth. Chemical fiber production data of the National Bureau of Statistics was 66.9784 million tons, a decrease of 0.96% year-on-year. There are some differences between the two data, which may be caused by different statistical caliber, such as POY and DTY.

(2) Insufficient terminal demand and sluggish downstream performance

From the perspective of terminal demand, the domestic market demand for textiles and clothing is insufficient, and although exports have reached a new high, the export growth rate in the second half of the year has fallen month by month.

In terms of domestic demand, in 2022, affected by factors such as the slowdown in resident income growth and the slow recovery of consumption scenes, the domestic consumer market will be under pressure. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that in 2022, the retail sales of clothing, shoes and hats, and textile products above the quota in the country decreased by 6.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate has continued to be negative since March. Online retail sales of wear goods increased by 3.5% year-on-year, the growth rate slowed by 4.8 percentage points compared with 2021, but it has continued to grow positively since June, and the consumption of clothing such as sports, outdoor and health care still has good growth resilience.

In terms of external demand, China's textile and apparel exports reached a new high in 2022, remaining above $300 billion for the third consecutive year, and the increase in export prices played an important supporting role. Customs data show that in 2022, China's textile and apparel exports totaled 340.95 billion US dollars, an increase of 2.5%. Among the major export products, the export value of textiles reached 156.84 billion US dollars, an increase of 1.4% year-on-year. The export of textile fabrics, chemical fibers and other supporting products in the industrial chain was an important growth point. Garment exports amounted to $184.11 billion, up 3.4% year on year.