In 2009, capacity utilization of China’s organic silicon industry was only 50% due to low market prices of organic silicon. The demand and supply in Chinese market of organic silicon monomer is still in balance, as the output capacity and apparent consumption respectively reaches 1.09 million tons and 1.10 million tons. As yet, foreign companies, Bluestar New Chemical Materials Co., Ltd and Zhejiang Wynca Chemical Group Co., Ltd have dominated China’s medium and high-end organic silicon monomer market, and the other companies are all in low-end market competition. In the upcoming years, Chinese organic silicon monomer market will witness increasingly competition since the rapid spreading of organic silicon monomer technologies domestically.

Organic silicon monomer characterizes obvious benefit from production scale, yet there is a big gap of Chinese organic silicon producers to foreign counterparts. Currently, the total output capacity of organic silicon monomer of the global top four organic silicon giants accounts for 65.5% of the world’s total, and just Dow Corning itself covers around 28%, reaching 860,000 tons a year. However, only a few companies like Wynca Chemical, Bluestar New Chemical Materials and Shandong Jinling can achieve mass-production of monomer, 100,000 tons and above, but still at lower level of scale production.

China’s Organic Silicon Deep-processed Products Layout, 2009
 
Source: ResearchInChina

When leading companies are conducting upstream and downstream integration, the production scale of organic silicon deep-processed products in China will maintain rapid growth. In 2009, the output of silastic and silicone oil took a 95% share of China’s total output of organic silicon deep-processed products; wherein, the output capacity and output of room-temperature silastic approximated 350,000 tons and 260,000 tons, respectively, and the output capacity of high-temperature silastic was 220,000 tons.

At present, downstream product deep-processing has much better profitability than such upstream products as monomer and intermediates. For instance, in 2009, the profitability of downstream firms such as Guibao Technology and Huitian Adhesive was far higher than upstream ones like Bluestar New Chemical Materials with large monomer output capacity.

Gross Profit Margins of Organic Silicon Business of China’s Organic Silicon Listed Companies, 2009
 
Source: Annual Reports of Companies, ResearchInChina

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