Development opportunity of synthetic rubber lies in auto building industry

Over the past few years, the structural oversupply issue of China’s synthetic rubber sector has emerged and the capacity utilization has been less than 50%. At the same time, China’s import of high-end synthetic in 2016 totaled 1.48 million tons, 21 times of the export volume.

Industry insiders believe the development opportunity of high-end synthetic rubber exists in the auto building industry.

Currently, China’s productivity, output, import volume and consumption of synthetic rubber all rank the world’s top one, and they are still growing.

However, the country’s output and capacity utilization are decreasing.

In China’s synthetic rubber sector, low-end products are in excess, mid-end products are competing, while high-end products are out of supply.

Zhao Hongguo, senior engineer of Lanzhou Chemical Industry Research Center, said special synthetic rubber can be find in auto tires and parts. As the auto industry has increasingly higher demand for the performance of rubber, more special synthetic rubber will be needed in car building.

Technical development and innovation of China’s synthetic rubber sector generally stay in the R&D stage. Therefore, it is key to transform the research results into industrial products, so as to seize the opportunity of market development and expand market share.