Decline In Production Scale Of Acrylic Staple Fiber In Japan

Since the beginning of 2008, the production scale of acrylic staple fiber in Japan has been declining continuously.

Acrylonitrile (AN) rose rapidly in the first half of the year, resulting in the market price of acrylic staple fiber much higher than that of polyester staple fiber, and the market demand for acrylic staple fiber in the world dropped sharply.

For chemical fiber production enterprises, the adjustment of loss making business has become an urgent task. Acrylic fiber producers have to reduce the scale of production.

In the first half of 2008, the performance of acrylic production enterprises showed that, except for Dongli companies, other Japanese enterprises appeared a decline in sales revenue and profits.

The sales of the brand "Nell" brand, the largest MITSUBISHI Liyang company in the industry, is 11 billion 100 million yen, a decrease of nearly half compared with the same period last year, and losses continue.

From the start up rate, MITSUBISHI liyang's largest plant in Japan is only 50% of its start-up rate, and the operating rate of Liyang plant in Ningbo, Dazhu, has dropped to around 30%.

Although the acrylic fiber staple business of Toyo textile company has been reduced to 40% from the beginning of this year, it has not been improved.

The company believes that the acrylic fiber staple market will not get warmer in the coming period, so it decides to further reduce the scale of production and increase the proportion of carbon fiber business.

Toonex tex's textile business deficit expanded further. 50% of the acrylic fiber staple production equipment was scrapped in the first half of this year, and the surplus equipment was planned for carbon fiber production.

Although acrylonitrile fiber production needs initial large-scale investment, it can be used as a representative of differential fiber because it can get unique properties by changing the formula.

However, the market price of acrylic staple fiber is much higher than that of polyester because of the fast rising price of raw materials.

Because of the inability to eliminate the impact of rising prices of raw materials, many users began to replace acrylic fibers with polyester staple fibers, resulting in a vicious circle in the acrylic fiber staple market.

MITSUBISHI Liyang predicts that the sales volume of acrylic staple fiber in the world will be 2 million 500 thousand tons in 2007, and it will be reduced to less than 2 million tons in 2008.

Under this background, Japan's major chemical fiber production enterprises have to adjust acrylic fiber production business.

The adjustment is carried out in two ways: first, to reduce investment in equipment and to reduce operating rate; the two is to increase carbon fiber production.

As for how to deal with the cut-off equipment, the practices of different enterprises are different. Some enterprises have already abandoned some equipment, but some enterprises (Rudong foreign textile) believe that if we can use the production equipment to concentrate on producing high added value clothing materials, it is entirely possible to reverse the situation.

Yang Jing: editor in charge