The BOPET Market Is Vast, But the High-End Sector Is Still Insufficient

Polyester film is a film made of high-quality polyester chips as the main raw material, using advanced technological formulas, drying, melting, extruding, casting, and stretching. The film produced by PET is a relatively comprehensive film with good transparency and luster; it has good air tightness and fragrance retention; and moderate moisture resistance. Polyester film has excellent mechanical properties, good toughness and impact resistance, and good stiffness. Polyester film also has excellent heat resistance, cold resistance, good chemical resistance, and oil resistance, so it is widely used in liquid crystal display, medical packaging, electrical products, new energy, and other industries.

Polyester Film Classification

According to different stretching processes, polyester films can be divided into uniaxially stretched polyester films and biaxially stretched polyester films. CPET is a film that is dried, melted, extruded, cast, and stretched longitudinally by using semi-dull materials. It has the lowest grade and price among polyester films; BOPET uses bright materials, also known as bright materials, which are raw materials. Polyester chips, dried, melted, extruded, cast, and longitudinally and biaxially stretched medium and high-grade films are widely used, with BOPET accounting for 95%. In terms of production capacity, despite the fluctuations in production, the overall BOPET production capacity has shown a steady upward trend. Since 2015, China's BOPET film production capacity has increased from 3.05 million tons to 3.38 million tons, and BOPET film products have also begun to develop into new fields such as new electrical films, photovoltaics, and optical films. China's BOPET production capacity ranks first in the world and has become an important global production base for BOPET products.

BOPET has achieved large-scale applications in many fields and is continuously expanding to other applications. In addition to packaging, BOPET can also be used in fields such as optics, photovoltaics, and electronic MLCC. Since the beginning of this year, the demand for optical and solar films has increased significantly, and the demand for BOPET has also increased significantly.

Since the fourth quarter, theprice of BOPET has risen from 10,700 yuan per ton to nearly 14,000 yuan per ton, and net profit per ton after tax has also expanded from about 3,000 yuan per ton to more than 5,000 yuan per ton, the most profitable polyester industry chain.

Optical Film Has Become A Strategic Emerging Material

Optical grade polyester basefilm is one of the most important strategic materials at the front end of the optoelectronic industry chain, mainly using polyester chips as the main material. Due to the need to meet the performance requirements of high light transmittance, low haze, and high brightness, the optical base film is the field with the highest technical barriers in the BOPET industry. The global optical base film is basically produced by large foreign companies. The high-end optical base film product market is monopolized by the products of Japan's Toray, the US 3M, Mitsubishi, and South Korea's SKC. These companies account for about 70% of the domestic backlight module market. With the rapid development of the domestic flat panel display industry, the demand for optical films in the market is huge, but the current domestic optical film production capacity is extremely small, which has caused China's BOPET industry to be in a structural contradiction of saturation of ordinary films and insufficient high-end films. The country will also focus on supporting domestic high-performance optical film suppliers, and relevant policies are issued every year; at the same time, Chinese companies also insist on innovation and overcome difficulties.

Benefiting From the Development of the Photovoltaic Industry, The Backplane Film Industry is Growing Rapidly

The mainstream solar photovoltaic backplane has a three-layer structure, including the outer protective layer fluorine film which with good resistance to environmental erosion, the middle layer base film with good insulation and mechanical properties. The inner fluorine film material and EVA film have Good bonding performance. PET is the substrate in the backplane, which plays the role of support, barrier, and electrical insulation. Generally, the surface of the PET film substrate is compounded or coated with different functional polymer materials to give the backplane excellent protection. The rapid rise of China's photovoltaic industry has become the main driving force for the development of the global photovoltaic industry. The rapid development of the photovoltaic industry has effectively driven the market demand for upstream backplane base films.

The Profitability of the Industry Is Gradually Improving, But the High-End Sector Is Still Insufficient

There are still about 300,000 tons of imported polyester films in our country each year. The BOPET industry in China, which is mainly used in electronic products, started in the 1980s. Most of the production lines were imported from abroad. With the rise of packaging applications, its market demand has grown rapidly, and the scale of the industry has expanded rapidly. The initial single-line annual production capacity was about 3,000 tons. The products were mainly positioned in photosensitive, magnetic recording substrates and electrical insulation. By the early 1990s, the annual production capacity was formed 3 Million tons. In the mid-1990s, with the rise of composite packaging applications, the BOPET film industry developed rapidly, with an annual production capacity of more than 100,000 tons. In the late 1990s, due to the rapid expansion and the economic crisis, the BOPET industry suffered a total loss. The rapid growth in demand after 2000 has driven the development of the industry. In 2005, functional products. After the 2008 financial crisis, due to the support of national policies, the industry was profitable and invested a lot of capital. From 2011 to 2014, the production capacity of BOPET film increased significantly, leading to a sharp decline in the profit margin of the film industry. The expansion of the industry in 2016-2019 is relatively rational, and the profitability level has gradually improved. High-end polyester film, such as optical base film. The price of imported BOPET is significantly higher than that of domestic products. According to data, the average price of imported polyester film in August 2020 was 7,325 US dollars per ton, and the average price of export in September was 2,596 US dollars per ton.

The downstream applications of BOPET film continue to expand, product differentiation is the industry development trend, and the demand is increasing. However, as downstream customers have diversified product functions and requirements, they have higher requirements in all aspects and are more targeted to the downstream market, making it more technically difficult for enterprises. China's BOPET companies are constrained by technology and equipment, unable to achieve large-scale production, resulting in insufficient supply and relying on foreign imports.

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