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Xudong Huang, director of elastomer research and development at Dow Chemical China, said that, for example, Dow Chemical has “established world-class R&D capabilities in China in recent years†and the number of R&D teams in Shanghai has increased from 50 to five years ago. 500 people today.
Dirk Michiels, Asia technology manager for ExxonMobil’s Asia Pacific R&D Center in Shanghai, said that similarly, ExxonMobil Chemical also established a technology center in Shanghai in March, which is its third largest technology center in the world. , focusing on the development of higher value products such as metallocene and specialty elastomers.
He said: "The center was set up to support the development of high-end products. There is very little research and development work on commodity products."
As one of the organizers of Flexpo Conference, the Houston-based consulting company ChemicalMarketResourcesInc. The company CMR said that the indigenous R&D capabilities in Asia are also rapidly developing.
CMR said that this is one of the reasons why the company has selected the recent Flexpo Conference in Asia.
CMR analyst and customer service director. N. Swamy said: "In my opinion, there is no doubt that although Asia still needs to catch up in many places, their development rate is much faster than expected. Innovation must meet market demand, and today's demand is concentrated in Asia. ."
Many of the veteran giants in the Western or Japanese plastics market made presentations at the Flexpo conference. Some have made some progress in product development, while others have managed to sell technology licenses to companies in some emerging Asian markets.
At the same time, China's state-owned petrochemical giants Sinopec Group and CNPC, as well as China's premier plastics processor Foshan Plastics Group Co., Ltd., also introduced various new products as their R&D achievements.
Foshan Plastics Group, headquartered in Foshan, Guangdong Province, said that the company has been developing flexible pipes based on thermoplastic elastomers, which cross-link materials through radiation generated by high-energy electron beams, thus overcoming the heat resistance of TPEs in practical applications. problem.
Among the overseas companies participating in the conference, Korea SKInnovationCo. Ltd. The company also announced its own latest developments. The company is ready to commercialize its production process using carbon dioxide as a plastic raw material, and it is expected to decide the size of its first commercial-scale production plant early next year.
According to CMR's Swamy, although Asian companies strengthen R&D to meet local needs, they also have an impact on global markets.
He said that as long as it takes time, it will be possible to accelerate the pace of innovation by global companies, which will also quickly make today's more profitable high-end products become more price-oriented products in the future, and profit margins will also increase. Zoom out.
To illustrate, he specifically mentioned Sinopec's plans announced at the Flexpo conference that it will start commercializing some of its grades of metallocene.
The metallocene market has traditionally been firmly occupied by Dow, Exxon Mobil, and Mitsui Chemicals, but with the increasing demand in emerging markets in Asia, Korean companies first started, and then Chinese companies began to independently develop metallocene products.
Speaking at Flexpo, he said: “With the increase in Asian production and the potential for more Asian companies to participate in, the profit margin of metallocene will shrink. The potential for commercialization has already formed. Although in the next 10 Years may not necessarily happen, and metallocenes will remain a high-end market, but most of the so-called high-end products in the past five years are likely to become extremely common commodities in the next 10 years."
Other CMR analysts believe that products such as EVA copolymers and PE-100 grade polyethylene tube resins may also face the same pressure for profitability as more and more Asian companies step into this area.
Although Chinese companies’ investment in research and development is increasing, a manager of the Chinese chemical industry bluntly stated at the Flexpo conference that the industry’s investment in research and development is still not large enough.
Xu Qiutang, president of the Shanghai Chemical Industry Association, said that in the 12th Five-Year Plan, China set an overall target of 3% of the chemical industry's R&D investment as a percentage of operating revenue, although this proportion is still lower than international standards. However, it is still difficult to achieve this goal. If it is realized, it will be a "great achievement."
Similarly, another Chinese chemical industry analyst who spoke at the Flexpo conference also believes that China's polyolefin companies lack advantages in the world market, because the domestic polyolefin plants are small, and the largest one is only the world's largest factory. 1/4 is big.
Fang Fang, assistant general manager of the consulting department of CNCIC at the China Chemical Information Center in Beijing, said that in addition, the product range of the domestic polyolefin industry is too single, with only about 100 different grades of materials, and there are as many as thousands of developed markets. . CNCIC and CMR jointly sponsored the Flexpo Conference.
He said in a speech at the Flexpo conference that China's polyolefin industry urgently needs to integrate and greatly enhance its ability to innovate and make more efforts to reduce foreign capital restrictions.
For some western companies in China, the rapid development of the Chinese market means that the market's acceptance of innovation is increasing.
ExxonMobil’s Michiels said that compared to other regions, many Asian companies are more likely to accept new ideas, because only in this way can they keep pace with market changes.
He said that it is expected that in the next decade, about 60% of the petrochemical industry's growth will come from Asia, of which China will account for nearly half, and Chinese customers will be more willing to accept good ideas that can help them improve their competitiveness.
He said: "This is a very positive development of the Chinese market. Although the entrenched concepts of European and American countries are sometimes difficult to change, people in Asia are very welcome to new things."
A speaker at the Flexpo conference in Shanghai recently said that both China's plastic raw material producers and western suppliers of chemical products are increasing their investment in R&D in China, especially the application-related development.