Driven by substantial growth of China’s automobile industry, in 2016, the rubber tire industry increased significantly, in addition, affected by factors such as haze and environmental protection, the rubber chemicals industry had a strong rebound, the market demand was strong, the price rose step by step, and the trend of short supply appeared in a short term. The implementation of new environmental protection law and the action of environmental protection supervision team of the state effectively promoted technical progress of rubber chemicals industry.

In 2017, the global economy may recover to become stabilized; however, uncertain factors still continue to exist, especially fall of growth of China’s GDP target as well as trade frictions such as “anti-dumping and countervailing” of the U.S. on Chinese passenger car and light truck tires, will have an influence on China’s rubber industry. It is predicted that in 2017, China’s rubber chemicals industry will be stable with a slight increase, and the annual growth rate will be about 6.6%.

1. Overview of China’s Rubber Chemicals Industry in 2016

1.1 Production and Marketing Conditions

According to the statistics of China Rubber Industry Association (hereinafter referred to as CRIA) Rubber Chemicals Special Committee, in 2016, the realized sales revenue of 47 member enterprises was 20.58 Billion Yuan, with a year-on-year (the same below) growth of 21.58%; the total output of rubber chemicals was 1.235 million tons, with a growth of 17.18%. Among the leading products, the output of accelerating agent was 417 thousand tons, with a growth of 21.37%; the output

of anti-deteriorant was 407 thousand tons, with a growth of 59.44%. The realized export delivery value was 6.345 Billion Yuan, with a growth of 10.85%, and the export rate (value) was 30.83%. The export of rubber chemicals was 347 thousand tons, with a growth of 13.89%, and the export rate (volume) was 28.08%. See Table 1 for data statistics of economic operation of rubber chemicals member enterprises in 2016.

Table 1 Data Statistics of Economic Operation of Rubber Chemicals Member Enterprises in 2016 

Note: Since the sample enterprises increase in the reform of online report statistics, the monthly statistics data is slightly enlarged, the statistics data of the whole year shall be subject to the annual statistics data. 

The growth of total output of rubber chemicals in 2016 was lower than the growth of sales revenue and output value, which indicates that the growth is caused by enlargement of market demand and the price increases obviously. In addition, as for the export rate, both volume rate and value rate, dropped slightly, which indicates that the domestic market demand grows more rapidly than the foreign market demand; on the other hand, the phenomenon that the export value rate is higher than the export volume rate was not obvious, which indicates that the price difference between domestic and foreign rubber chemicals products becomes smaller and smaller.

The contribution to output growth of rubber chemicals can be mainly subdivided as follows: the output of processing agent increases by 41.4%, that of the special functional additive increases by 34.5%, that of the vulcanizing agent increases by 17.8%, and that of the anti-deteriorant has the smallest growth and increases by only 9.44%; since the peroxide was adjusted into the class of vulcanizing agent in 2016, which was included into the class of accelerating agent, the factor of peroxide is excluded and the output of accelerating agent also increases.

Viewed from the monthly output of 2016, the growth driven by tire market started from the beginning of the year, reached the peak in April, then fell month by month, shocked to become stable from August to October and declined consecutively in last two months, the reason of which shall be related to production halt of rubber chemicals enterprises in North China caused by haze. See Fig. 1 for comparison of monthly output of rubber chemicals member enterprises.

Fig. 1 Comparison of Monthly Output of Rubber Chemicals Member Enterprises 

Fig. 2 Comparison of Monthly Sales Revenue of Rubber Chemicals Member Enterprises 

Fig. 3 Monthly Growth Tendency Chart of Rubber Chemicals Member Enterprises 

The production and operation of top 10 key enterprises in rubber chemicals industry continues to be industry-leading, whose sales revenue accounts for 65.4% of total sales revenue of the member enterprises; the sales revenue of top 20 enterprises accounts for 83.7% of total sales revenue of the member enterprises. There are 6 enterprises with a sales revenue of over 1 Billion Yuan, 9 with a sales revenue of over 0.5 Billion Yuan and over 20 with a sales revenue of over 0.2 Billion Yuan. The trend that the strong will be always strong is obvious, and the industry concentration becomes further enhanced.

1.2 Characteristics of Current Situation

Although China is already a big production nation of rubber chemicals in the world at present, it still has a certain gap in the aspects of process technology, equipment and modern management, and environmental pollution and safety production are still the bottom line for enterprise survival. Therefore, the development and expansion of China rubber chemicals industry still requires more input in technical renovation, process automation and management innovation to improve the overall level of the industry, including the level of new product development, per-capita production value, resource consumption, energy consumption, etc. 

Table 2 Gross Output of National Rubber Chemicals from 2010 to 2016 (Ten Thousand Tons) 

Table 2 is the output estimate of national rubber chemicals over the years (the data of 2017 is the predicted data), Fig. 4 is the output growth tendency of member enterprises. The fluctuation of growth tendency appeared in 2015, the growth tendency line was returned in 2016, and it is predicted that the growth tendency will still be maintained in 2017.

Fig. 4 Output Growth Tendency Chart of Rubber Chemicals Member Enterprises

2016 is the first year of “13th Five-year” Plan, the development of China rubber chemicals industry still centers on scientific and sustainable development, cleaner production and energy conservation and emission reduction. Its development focuses include:

(1) Paying attention to safety production and improving the survival capacity of the enterprises

Along with the implementation of new Security Law and new Environmental Protection Law of the state, tough stance is formed on survival security of chemical enterprises. For rubber chemicals industry, the prominent problem encountered at present is still environmental protection security. The previous focus of environmental protection is wastewater treatment, the treatment technology shall be continuously innovated, especially the innovation of process technology shall be advocated, to realize zero emission of waste water of rubber accelerating agent as early as possible. Besides waste water, at present exhaust gas (especially odor) and hazardous solid waste are problems requiring to be solved. Since 2016, many enterprises encounter such events; those in less severe cases are stopped for examination for several days while those in more severe cases stop production for reorganization.

For this reason, in 2016, the key enterprises in the industry enlarged the input in safety production and environmental protection, hoping to build a safe and stable rubber chemicals supply platform through efforts of leading enterprises.

(2) Continuing raising the automation level of the industry, and strengthening integration of “automation and intelligentization”

In 2016, rubber chemicals industry continues strengthening the input in production automation, the key enterprises carried out reform of old production lines and construction of new automatic production lines, and a few emerging enterprises directly input center-control automatic accelerating agent production lines once entering the newly-built factories in the chemical industrial park.

The main tasks for realizing center-control automation and airtight production process technology of rubber chemicals and striving in the direction of intelligentization are still:

• Center-control automation of rubber chemicals: At present, the production processes of a part of rubber chemicals have realized serialization, automation and informationization, and quite a few, especially rubber accelerating agent, still adopt the production processes of batch process and manual control. Scale and automation is the only road for improving the quality stability and uniformity of the products as well as increasing the average sales revenue of the industry.
• Airtight series production process: The production process of all rubber chemicals shall achieve airtight series production process and center-control automation. At present, rubber anti-deteriorant, silane coupling agent, etc. take the lead for the time being, and input shall be increased to improve the other products, 

especially rubber accelerating agent, with emphasis. In particular, since the concept of VOCs is put forward, it is predicted that the exhaust gas treatment will be enhanced in the future 2~3 years. Therefore, micro-chemical pipeline continuous process technology will be the new process technology studied and discussed by rubber chemicals enterprises with emphasis.

(3) Further promoting the cleaner production level of the industry

According to the requirements of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, CRIA is organizing to establish the standard Cleaner Production Evaluation Index System of Rubber Chemicals Industry. This standard emphasizes the pollutant emission index and energy consumption index, which will play a positive role in promoting energy conservation and emission reduction of China’s rubber chemicals industry as well as innovation of mainstream process technologies, cooperating with automatic, informationizational and modern enterprise management and improving the cleaner production level of China’s rubber chemicals industry.

At present, Cleaner Production Evaluation Index System of Rubber Chemicals Industry has been reported to National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for approval and will be jointly officially published by these three ministries and commissions finally.

(4) Continuing strengthening technical innovation and maintaining sustainable development of the industry

At present, the key technologies and generic technologies to be solved by China’s rubber chemicals industry mainly include:

• Continuous research and promotion of cleaner process

The research of cleaner production process mainly focuses on: development and promotion of cleaner production process of accelerating agent MBT as well as sulfenamide accelerator oxygen oxidation and hydrogen peroxide oxidation process route, and development and promotion of high thermostable insoluble sulfur continuous production technology. Micro-chemical channel technology is also one of the innovation hot spots, which is under research and exploration of each key enterprise.

• R&D of new products

As for accelerating agent, new vulcanization accelerator not producing nitrosamine shall be actively developed, and the accelerating agents producing nitrosamine shall be disused; new additives suitable for green tires and high-performance rubber products shall be actively developed.

As for anti-deteriorant, cooperation and communication with tire and rubber products industry shall be strengthened to enhance the development of new anti-deteriorants and their series products, such as high-end products like anti-deteriorant 3100, 4030, natural amino acids, new light anti-deteriorant, high-performance long-acting anti-deteriorant TAPTD.

As for pre-dispersion agent, in 2016, key enterprises and professional production enterprises of pre-dispersion master colloidal particle jointly formed the compilation team of CRIA standard General Specification for Pre-dispersion Master Colloidal Particle. Pre-dispersion master colloidal particle is one of the directions for development of rubber chemicals, and the release of this standard surely will better push the promotion of pre-dispersion master colloidal particle.

As for functional additives, there are also some new researches or innovation signs, for example, for vulcanizing activator, reducing or not using zinc oxide may be possible.

(5) Constantly improving the industry concentration and building international famous brands

CRIA always advocates that the key enterprises of the industry take anti-deteriorants and accelerating agent as the main products and comprehensively develop diversified varieties, constantly expand the market share, promote the brands of the enterprises and strive to build 3~5 world-class brands of rubber chemicals through scientific merger and reorganization as well as effective marketing network. According to the current development tendency, the hopeful enterprises are still Jiangsu Sinorgchem Technology Co., Ltd., China Sunsine Chemical Holdings Ltd., Shandong Yanggu Huatai Chemical Co., Ltd., Kemai Chemical Co., Ltd., Weilin New Materials Technology Co., Ltd., Nanjing Shuguang Chemical Group Co., Ltd., etc.

By the end of “13th Five-year”, it is expected that 5~6 enterprises will realize intensive and large-scale production (the variety is complete, the product structure is reasonable and the enterprise management mode reaches advanced level) to enable China’s rubber chemicals to reach the level of world powers. The specific target is that there will be over 5 enterprises with a sales revenue of over 2 Billion Yuan and over 8 enterprises with a sales revenue of over 1 Billion Yuan, and the market share of top 10 enterprises will reach over 80%, thus realizing the dream of rubber chemicals power. 

2. 2017 Outlook of Rubber Chemicals Industry

According to the development tendency of China’s automobile industry and tire industry, it is predicted that the national output of rubber chemicals in 2017 will be 1.29 million tons, with an increase of 6.6%; in which the output of member enterprises will be 1.20 million tons, with an increase of 7.0%.

Main evidences are:

(1) Automobile industry still maintains in a good growth scope, and relevant industries will develop simultaneously and stably, in which the rigid demand of transportation industry, coal industry, manufacturing industry, etc. for rubber products still exists.

(2) China’s rubber chemicals holds a stable position in the world, the research of cleaner production process of rubber accelerating agent has been in the world leading level, the industry concentration is extremely high and many brands have possessed international influence, thus the export of rubber chemicals is expected to be stable with a slight increase in 2017.

(3) Since the gross output in 2016 returned to the ascending orbit and the annual growth rate was relatively high, the output growth will slightly fall in 2017 and is predicted to be 5%~7%.