On January 5, the successful commissioning ceremony for Shenghong Petrochemical's high-end material PETG unit was held in Xuwei New District, Lianyungang. Xing Zhengjun, Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee and Mayor of Lianyungang; Wei Huaiyu, Vice Chairman of the Municipal People's Political Consultative Conference and Director of the Municipal Development and Reform Commission; Han Shangfu, a member of the Party Group and Secretary-General of the Municipal Government; Yu Ji'an, Secretary of the Party Committee and Director of the Municipal Emergency Management Bureau; Miao Hangen, Chairman of Shenghong Holding Group; Bai Wei, President of Shenghong Petrochemical Industry Group; and Guo Pangli, General Manager of Jiangsu Honggang Petrochemical Co., Ltd.; as well as other leaders and guests attended the event. Zhao Houfeng, director of the Xuwei New District Management Committee and deputy secretary of the Party Work Committee, presided over the ceremony.
The project is independently developed and innovatively designed by Shenghong Petrochemical, and 13 patents have been declared around the core technology, all of which have independent intellectual property rights. The production capacity of the unit is 130,000 tonnes/year. With Honggang Petrochemical PTA and Shenghong Refining and Chemical ethylene glycol as raw materials, the chain is extended to produce high-value-added and high-end new material products, which can achieve annual sales revenue of more than 2 billion yuan. With the successful commissioning of the project, the total production capacity of Shenghong Petrochemical PETG has jumped to be top in China.
PETG (polyethylene terephthalate-1,4-cyclohexane dimethanol) is condensed from PTA (terephthalic acid), EG (ethylene glycol), CHDM (1,4-cyclohexane dimethanol) and other monomers. Compared with traditional PC materials, PETG has excellent heat-processing capabilities, toughness, weather and chemical resistance, and high transparency. It does not contain bisphenol A. It is non-toxic and harmless to the human body and the natural environment. It has broad development prospects in the fields of special containers, high-end membrane materials, medicine and hygiene, new sheets, environmental friendly building materials and other fields.
At present, with the improvement of global environmental protection and health policy requirements, the PETG industry has ushered in great development opportunities. According to the data, the global PETG market will exceed 13 billion in 2023 and will exceed 20 billion by 2030. However, due to the high industry barriers, the domestic mainstream PETG industrial production technology and series of products have been dominated by foreign companies for a long time, meaning the external dependence of the market is as high as more than 80%. With the rapid development of China's PETG market, the application and research and development of related core production technologies will definitely become the focus of attention in the industry. Through unremitting scientific and technological breakthroughs, Shenghong Petrochemical has successfully mastered the core key technologies; completely broken the monopoly of foreign technology; and further innovated and improved, whether it be in catalysts, the polymerization processes, product performance optimization, or formula development, etc. The by-products of the process are lower, the energy utilization rate is higher, and the technology has reached the international leading level.
Shenghong Petrochemical's PETG project products are in line with the 2021 national key project "Advanced Structure and Composite Materials" and the "High-end Development Plan of Jiangsu Province's 14th Five-Year Plan for the Chemical Industry". Under the background of national material security, the project can greatly increase the domestic self-sufficiency rate of PETG products from less than 20% to more than 50%, greatly alleviating the vigorous demands of the domestic market. It will also further lead and promote related industries to accelerate the pace of high-end transformation and help the national key materials industry achieve autonomy and control.
The main raw materials of PTA, EG, etc. for the PETG unit put into production this time come from the upstream equipment of the group. From the product end, it opens up a key node of the industrial chain from aromatic hydrocarbons to PTA, and then to high-end ester new materials, and realizes a closed loop from basic raw materials to high-end new materials. The efficient integrated layout of upstream and downstream has significant cost and competitive advantages. While refining products, it has also greatly improved the value chain, opening up ideas for the group to optimize its industrial structure, increase product varieties and broaden sales channels, which will greatly improve the risk resistance of enterprises. With the continuous deepening of technological research and development and the maturing of production technology, a new industrial growth pole for the group will be quickly formed.
