According to the forecast of Tiantian Chemical Network, due to the promising market prospects in Europe and the United States, the growth rate of water-based polyurethane in the European and American markets is expected to reach 30% this year. According to statistics, the clothing market giants ZARA and HM in the European and American markets have a 20% market share in the European and American regions. Under the pressure of environmental protection, HM has switched to water-based synthetic leather this year, and ZARA will also switch to water-based synthetic leather within next year as planned.
From the point of view of the product itself, water-based polyurethane is a new type of polyurethane system that uses water instead of organic solvents as the dispersion medium. Water-based polyurethane uses water as a solvent, which has the advantages of no pollution, safety and reliability, excellent mechanical properties, good compatibility, and easy modification. It not only overcomes the shortcomings of traditional solvent-based polyurethanes such as low solid content (generally 15%-30%), serious environmental pollution and human health hazards during use, but also avoids extreme damage caused by the use of large amounts of organic solvents. Big waste. Therefore, the environmental protection performance of the product has obvious advantages in the face of current domestic policies and global appeals.
From the perspective of manufacturers’ supply, because it is a new product, the production scale of each manufacturer is small; and because of the environmental protection nature of the products, the market growth potential is obvious, so this market has great investment potential. The editor predicts that the waterborne polyurethane market will have similar growth potential to that of new energy vehicles and various new energy industries. According to the statistics of the Tiantian Chemical Network database, the current mainstream players in the industry are Wanhua, the company with the largest water-based PU output in 2021; Covestro, which has started a new water-based PU factory in Shanghai’s integrated base; The team and product quality are far ahead of the peer Ketian. Although the three companies have their own advantages, their disadvantages are also obvious. For example, Wanhua’s product quality is weaker than that of Ketian; however, due to its small scale and certain financial problems, Ketian has been unable to expand its production capacity, so its product advantages are relatively low; because Covestro is a new factory, although they It has technical advantages, but water-based PU is relatively a new field for them, and the cost pressure is high, so there are certain disadvantages.
2021China’s waterborne polyurethane production enterprises in 2021 (unit: 10,000 tons)
After reading the competitive landscape of manufacturers, from the perspective of demand, first of all, with the support of ZARA and H&M, two major clothing manufacturers, it is relatively easy to achieve an annual growth rate of 30% in the European and American markets. According to the prediction of Tiantian Chemical Network database, the domestic consumption of waterborne polyurethane will be about 294,000 tons in 2026, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 11.7%. The main reason for the low growth rate is that the quality of domestic water-based polyurethane is slightly lower, and the overall demand for domestic water-based PU is slightly lower; in addition, water-based polyurethane products are widely used in the field of leather finishing agents. The market is still under development.
To sum up, as an environmentally friendly product, water-based polyurethane has a relatively narrow overall scope of application. Therefore, as a blue ocean market, it is worthy of deep exploration and investment by major manufacturers. If it breaks through the technical threshold and cost pressure, it will still have some achievements in such a large market as China.
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