Currently China only has four caprolactam producing enterprises. Country's caprolactam production in 2000 was 129,600 tons, 200,800 tons in 2003 and 227,700 tons in 2004. In 2005 the production increased to 290,800 tons, a rise of 37.1 over the previous year.
China's caprolactam production scored 365,000 tons in 2006, a boost of 4.1 percent over the previous year. The average production growth rate was at 14.42 percent for 2000-2006 period.
Despite the recent growth in caprolactam production, it has still failed to meet the rapid developing demand from downstream industries, such as nylon filament, cord, and polyamide engineering plastics. China has to import a large quantity every year. In 2000-2006, the average annual growth rate of China's apparent consumption of caprolactam was at 12.57 percent.
China's caprolactam is mainly used in production of nylon fiber and nylon 6 engineering plastics.
In 2004, China's output of nylon (primarily civilian nylon fibers and cord) reached to 668,000 tons, consuming 565,000 tons of caprolactam, accounting for 83.5 percent of the total consumption.
In 2005 nylon production came to 717,000 tons, consuming 606,000 tons of caprolactam, accounting for 86.18 percent of the total consumption.
Based on the future development plan of nylon industry, China's demand of nylon 6 in 2006-2010 is expected to have an average annual growth rate of 8.0 percent. Therefore the total caprolactam demand in2010 will most probably reach 900,000 tons.
Fibre2fashion, News Desk - China
marketing@alchempro.com
