With the start-up of Jilin Petrochemical Company's 260,000-tonne acrylonitrile unit (annual capacity, the same below) in mid-August, China's acrylonitrile industry has once again witnessed a concentrated launch of production capacity. The latest statistics show that the expected new acrylonitrile capacity in China will reach over 1.3 million tonnes in 2025. If the new projects are put into production as scheduled, the total industry capacity will exceed 5.7 million tonnes in one fell swoop. The "capacity expansion wave" brought about by this million-tonne capacity increase has also triggered market concerns about supply-demand imbalance, and the industry may usher in a new round of in-depth adjustment.
In 2025, China's acrylonitrile industry has entered a new phase of concentrated capacity expansion. According to statistics from Jinlianchuang, in the first half of this year alone, Yulong Petrochemical's 130,000-tonne unit, Quanzhou Petrochemical's 260,000-tonne unit, and Zhenhai Refining & Chemical's 400,000-tonne unit have been put into production one after another. With the launch of Jilin Petrochemical Company's new 260,000-tonne capacity, the total industry capacity has increased by nearly a quarter compared with the end of 2024.
Insiders in the industry believe that the acrylonitrile industry is ushering in the second phase of concentrated expansion in nearly five years. The first phase of capacity expansion occurred from 2020 to 2023, during which the total capacity increased from 2.597 million tonnes to 4.399 million tonnes. Data from Guanyan Tianxia shows that the planned new capacity of the acrylonitrile industry this year is 1.31 million tonnes. If all of it is put into production, the total industry capacity will exceed 5.7 million tonnes.
It is reported that acrylonitrile units of enterprises such as Zhejiang Petrochemical and INEOS (Tianjin) are planned to be put into production one after another within the year. By then, the number of production enterprises in the industry will increase from 16 to 20. Against this backdrop, the market share of the top five enterprises in terms of industry capacity concentration will drop from 63.47% in 2024 to 55.91%, the lowest level in nearly five years. The market generally judges that with the increase in the number of "players entering the market", the right to speak in the acrylonitrile industry will be further decentralized.
From the demand side, the three major downstream products of acrylonitrile are currently basically in a state of market saturation, and their driving effect on upstream raw materials is limited.
Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene copolymer (ABS) resin has always been the core driver of acrylonitrile consumption, accounting for 50% of its downstream consumption structure. In recent years, China's ABS capacity has grown rapidly, increasing from 4.425 million tonnes in 2020 to 9.165 million tonnes in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 19.97%. However, this has not led to an improvement in industry efficiency. In 2024, the average profit of the ABS industry fell to -253 yuan per tonne, a year-on-year decrease of 220.3%; the annual output dropped to 5.488 million tonnes, a year-on-year decrease of 6.83%.
"The ABS industry will still be in a peak period of capacity release from 2025 to 2026, with 3.8 million tonnes of new units planned to be put into production, but the industry vitality has obviously insufficient," the analysis team of Longzhong Information pointed out. The terminal demand for ABS is mainly household appliances, accounting for more than 45%; while household appliances are durable goods. Affected by the sluggish real estate market and terminal consumer demand, the white goods market has a limited role in boosting the new demand for ABS. In the future, the ABS industry will be in a state of "high capacity and low output" for a long time.
The acrylic fiber sector is also facing the problem of demand pressure. Due to the poor performance of the downstream weaving sector in the chemical fiber industry, the operating rate of weaving enterprises has dropped below 60% since 2025, and overseas orders have decreased by 30% year-on-year. Affected by this, chemical fiber factories have to control capacity through centralized maintenance to balance market supply, and it is difficult to form an effective support for the demand for upstream acrylonitrile.
In terms of acrylamide, dragged down by the global economic downturn, the demand growth in traditional downstream application fields is insufficient, and the market procurement enthusiasm is low. Although emerging fields such as environmental protection and water treatment have policy support, the demand scale has not yet been formed, and it cannot temporarily fill the demand gap in traditional application fields.
At present, the operating rates of the three major main fields of ABS, acrylic fiber and acrylamide are generally maintained at a low level of 60% to 70%, which has a limited supporting effect on acrylonitrile. Against the background of the concentrated launch of new capacity in 2025, the supply-demand problem in the acrylonitrile industry may further intensify.
Facing the above challenges, how can the acrylonitrile industry break through the predicament? Insiders believe that with the key support of relevant policies for the new material industry, high-end downstream application fields of acrylonitrile such as carbon fiber and high-performance engineering plastics will achieve rapid growth. It is expected that from 2025 to 2030, the demand for acrylonitrile will be driven to grow at an average annual rate of 8% to 12%.
In the carbon fiber industry chain, the cost of precursor accounts for an extremely high proportion - in 2024, the cost of precursor accounted for 58.71% of the total cost of carbon fiber. Acrylonitrile is a key raw material for the production of carbon fiber precursor, and its value in the carbon fiber field will become increasingly prominent. In recent years, benefiting from the rapid development of new energy and other fields, the scale of China's carbon fiber industry has continued to expand, with output increasing from 18,700 tonnes in 2020 to 59,000 tonnes in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 33.28%, showing strong development resilience.
In the future, with the breakthrough of key carbon fiber preparation technologies such as dry-jet wet spinning and the continuous optimization of production costs, the penetration rate of carbon fiber in fields such as lightweight components of new energy vehicles and large-scale components of wind turbine blades will increase significantly. Combined with the promotion of policy support and the continuous expansion of application scenarios, the scale of the carbon fiber industry will expand at an accelerated pace, creating considerable new demand space for the acrylonitrile industry.
In the next five years, as the demand for carbon fiber in emerging fields enters a period of explosive growth, the acrylonitrile market will enter a golden development stage simultaneously. The annual output value of the industry is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan, becoming an important cornerstone for supporting the development of China's high-end chemical new material industry.
It is worth noting that the current competition in the acrylonitrile industry has entered a fierce stage, and the control of production costs has become the key to the survival of enterprises. From the perspective of industry development trends, technological innovation will be the core driving force for market competition in the future. For example, enterprises with independent technologies can not only reduce production costs in terms of raw material consumption and energy consumption control, but also produce products that meet high-end downstream demand, thus gaining an advantage in the industry reshuffle. In the market environment of supply-demand imbalance in the acrylonitrile industry, only enterprises that take the lead in achieving "strengthening and optimizing" can seize the development opportunities in the high-end downstream and truly occupy the market first-mover advantage.
