At present, China has become the world's largest producer of chemical products. In the future, it is expected to maintain a relatively high growth rate and further expand its influence. From the perspective of the development trend of the chemical industry, there is still much room for development in the field of fine chemicals in China. Fine chemical industry is a strategic focus of the development of the chemical industry in the world, and it is also an important development direction of China's chemical companies. The prospects are still promising.

Fine Chemical Industry Development Status

At present, most of China's fine chemical companies are lagging behind in equipment, the technology research and development cycle is too long, research and development is not enough, capital investment is insufficient, a complete innovation system has not yet been formed, and there are very few practical fine chemicals, and the innovation is not complete. No core competitiveness has been formed.

At the same time, the degree of concentration of fine chemicals is very low, and most of the enterprises are decentralized and it is difficult to produce high levels of fine chemicals. The fine chemical industry should have been highly integrated with the development of information technology. However, at present domestic fine chemical industry is still in an embarrassing situation of surviving the guarantee of survival. There is no time to consider informationization, which seriously restricts the sound development of the fine chemical industry.

Moreover, most companies are "profit-making only", do not consider the issue of environmental pollution, resulting in a lot of waste of resources, the huge cost of processing "three wastes" has become a heavy economic burden on the fine chemical industry. It can be said that environmental pollution has not only become a huge challenge for the sustainable development of human beings, but also the biggest obstacle to the development of elaborate chemical industry.

我国&国外精细化率对比(单位：%)

Source: Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, China Fine Chemicals Industry Report

Fine Chemical Product Supply Analysis

According to the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” issued by the state, by 2015, the domestic self-sufficiency rate of fine chemicals should reach over 80%. However, in view of the current self-sufficiency rate of the refined chemical industry, a large amount of capital and technology investment is still required. Due to technological and other reasons, domestic progress in new areas of fine chemicals and new chemical materials has lagged behind. The domestic self-sufficiency rate in the new field of fine chemicals is between 70% and 75%, and the self-sufficiency rate in electronic chemicals and other fields is less than 50%. In terms of new chemical materials, the domestic self-sufficiency rate is only hovering between 55% and 60%. between. In these high-tech fields, the more high-end and important products, the lower the domestic self-sufficiency rate.

Moreover, the structure of China's fine chemical products is not very reasonable. The current domestic production of new chemical materials is mainly low-grade products, while the high-end products mainly rely on imports. For example, the price of imported PTFE is about twice the price of exported PTFE.

The chemical new materials produced in China are still mainly general-purpose products, and there are no special products for market segments. For example, in the four major organic silicon materials (silicone rubber, silicone oil, silicon resin, and silane coupling agent), developed countries have 6-8 thousand specific varieties and brands, but only dozens of species in our country.

2009-2015年我国精细化工企业数量与新开工项目数量对比(单位：个，项)

Source: Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, China Fine Chemicals Industry Report

　　In addition, the market for some environmentally friendly products is still in its early stages of development. Because China has not collected environmental taxes on non-biodegradable ordinary plastics. Compared with traditional plastics, biodegradable plastics have a relatively high cost of use, and the market for degradable plastics is still in its early stages of development. As a developing country, the ODS alternatives currently used in China are still dominated by HCFCs that have less destructive effects on the ozone layer. The future needs to be gradually replaced by HFCs that have no destructive effect on the ozone layer.

Fine chemical industry prospects

It is precisely because of the above deficiencies that China's fine chemical industry will have more development prospects in the future. As more and more multinational companies invest and build factories in China, the continuous expansion of scale and the introduction of advanced preparation technologies will surely bring about a continuous increase in the supply of China's fine chemical markets.

According to statistics, in 2015, the gross industrial output value of China's fine chemical industry was approximately 3702.1 billion yuan, an increase of about 10% from 2014. According to the current development momentum, it is expected that by 2021, the industrial output value of the industry will reach around 5.9 trillion yuan, and there is still room for growth.

2016-2021 Forecast of Gross Industrial Production Value of Fine Chemical Industry (Unit: 100 million yuan)

Source: Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, China Fine Chemicals Industry Report