From the perspective of important raw materials for spandex production, the price of polytetramethylene ether glycol (PTMEG) increased from 26,000 yuan/ton at the end of October to 28,000 yuan/ton at the end of November, a rise of 7.7%; the price of pure isocyanate (MDI) also rose from 18,000 yuan/ton at the end of October to 20,300 yuan/ton at the end of November, an increase as high as 12.8%. Meanwhile, international oil prices, which are closely watched by the chemical fiber industry, also showed a tendency to rise. Therefore, the price increase of spandex fibers has become an inevitable and necessary task.
This article comes from Global Textile Network. Please indicate the source if you reprint! In China, although the textile industry started late in the production of spandex fibers, the growth rate of the entire industry has been very rapid. According to relevant department statistics, by the first half of 2010, there were a total of 76 spandex enterprises above the designated size in China. At the same time, the average scale of spandex enterprises far exceeds the average level of the entire textile industry. This reflects that there are many large enterprises in China's spandex industry, with concentrated high-quality capacity and a small proportion of backward capacity, and the overall growth momentum of the industry is still relatively healthy.
However, downstream textile enterprises in the spandex industry do not "buy" this. The main reason is that at that time, the domestic market demand for spandex fibers and their products did not increase significantly. And in the international market, the export of China's spandex fibers and their products still remained stagnant. Therefore, most domestic textile enterprises were still operating at low load, with insufficient production. In addition, textile enterprises have continued to adopt a suppressive attitude towards upstream spandex fiber production enterprises. On the one hand, they try to use inventory spandex raw materials, and on the other hand, they adopt the principle of purchasing spandex raw materials according to needs. This directly caused the result of oversupply in the entire spandex market at that time, with low prices.
In 1989, a textile enterprise in Yantai, China, was the first to start producing spandex domestically. Now, the main methods for producing spandex include dry spinning, melt spinning, wet spinning, and chemical reaction methods. However, no matter which production method is used, it cannot avoid having a huge impact on the environment. With the development of the economy, China now has an annual production capacity of more than 350,000 tons of spandex, becoming the world's largest producer of spandex.
Under such circumstances, some enterprises that had "principally" agreed to uniformly raise the price of spandex products quietly began their own discount sales plans. However, face-saving work still needed to be done. At that time, these spandex production enterprises adopted the so-called "preferential" sales operation measures. Therefore, during the period from June to October 2010 when the price of spandex fibers seemed stable on the surface, in reality, the price of spandex fibers was basically declining.
Spandex is an elastic fiber, scientifically known as polyurethane fiber, and has been simply referred to as "spandex" in China. In 1937, spandex was first successfully developed by Germans, and in 1959, American chemical fiber enterprises successfully achieved large-scale and industrialized production of spandex. Spandex has high elasticity, can be stretched 6-7 times its original length, and quickly returns to its initial state after the tension disappears. In fact, in the textile clothing industry, spandex is generally not used alone but is mixed in small amounts into fabrics. This type of fiber has both rubber-like properties and fiber characteristics, mostly used as the core yarn in covered core yarns, called elastic covered core yarns. Currently, spandex is widely used in knitted goods, bandages, socks, underwear, jeans, etc.
The "miracle" occurred in November 2010, on the 4th, another coordination meeting of the spandex industry was held in Shaoxing, bringing a bit of vitality to the domestic spandex market, which was originally in the off-season. However, the reactions of dealers and textile enterprises downstream were not very active, still mainly purchasing according to needs. But just one week after the meeting ended, the basic raw materials of the domestic textile industry began to "soar" across the board. Under such a big atmosphere, the raw materials of the spandex industry inevitably saw a significant rise.
What made some spandex enterprises even more troubled was that the intention of a unified price increase for spandex products, which had already been reached, appeared so pale and powerless in the face of market depression and product overstocking, falling apart without any resistance.
In fact, due to the different production methods used by China's spandex production enterprises, there was a certain gap in the product costs among the enterprises. Although the gap in spandex production costs does not look too large, it still unavoidably caused instability in the domestic spandex fiber market prices at that time. At the same time, in the second half of 2010, China also newly built and successively put into operation a batch of spandex production lines. This objectively caused an increase in the supply of spandex raw materials in the domestic market, further deepening the balance of supply and demand in the spandex industry.
It is well known that spandex has always been regarded as the "seasoning" of textile products within the industry. If textile products are compared to a sumptuous feast, then spandex plays the role of "monosodium glutamate," which is used in small quantities but indispensable. It is precisely because spandex serves as the "monosodium glutamate" of textiles, its demand has a very close linkage effect with other textile raw materials. It is understood that about 70% of China's chemical fiber textile exports contain spandex components (content ranging from 3%--18%). This indicates that spandex industries have stronger pricing power compared to other products. In 2010, the material price increase for China's spandex fibers was relatively small compared to other raw materials in the textile industry. Therefore, reviewing the spandex industry in China in 2010, overall, the spandex industry performed well, and the domestic spandex sector saw a comprehensive upward trend.
In the first half of 2010, due to the influence of the international financial crisis not being completely eliminated, the export volume of spandex products did not increase significantly. Therefore, the price of spandex fibers remained relatively low. At this time, the price of polytetramethylene ether glycol (PTMEG), one of the main raw materials for the spandex industry, still remained high. This created an abnormal phenomenon in the entire spandex industry where raw material prices exceeded finished product prices. Subsequently, the prices of two other major raw materials required for spandex production, isocyanates (MDI) and 1,4-butanediol (BDO), also began to gradually rise. Under the pressure of continuously rising raw material costs, domestic spandex production enterprises could not help but begin to plan for a price increase in spandex fibers.
Coincidentally, due to energy-saving and emission-reduction responsibilities, some local governments began to implement controversial "power cuts" on spandex production enterprises around June and July 2010. The implementation of this measure directly caused a noticeable decrease in domestic spandex production at that time. Meanwhile, domestic spandex industry coordination meetings were also being held in full swing. This meeting not only determined the inspection dates for various spandex production enterprises in the industry, leading to a hard reduction in spandex fiber product output, but also set the principle of a uniform price increase for spandex products to avoid losses. All these situations and intentions seemed to indicate that the price increase of domestic spandex fiber products was an inevitable fact.