Market supply and demand
• Supply:
In 2025, domestic soda ash production capacity will continue to expand, and may exceed 46 million tons by the end of the year. In the week of March 13, the output of soda ash was 679,500 tons, a decrease of 18,400 tons from the previous month, a decrease of 2.64%. The plant operating rate has declined. In the week of March 14, the comprehensive capacity utilization rate of soda ash was 81.10%, a decrease of 7.94 percentage points from the beginning of March. However, as some maintenance units are restored in the later period, the supply pressure cannot be ignored, and Lianyungang is expected to put new capacity into production.
• Inventory: As of the week of March 13, the total inventory of domestic soda ash manufacturers was 1.7352 million tons, a decrease of 24,700 tons from the previous week, a decrease of 1.40%, but doubled from the same period last year. The inventory is still at a high level in recent years. • Demand: Glass is the main downstream industry of soda ash. Supported by the rush to install photovoltaic equipment in the first half of the year, photovoltaic glass is expected to continue to increase production. In March, two production lines fulfilled the ignition expectations. Previously, more than 70% of the production lines that were blocked in the kiln were restored. At present, the daily melting capacity of photovoltaic glass is 88,420 tons, an increase of 10.2% compared with the beginning of the year. However, the recovery of float glass demand is limited, and the overall industry inventory continues to accumulate, which has limited driving effect on the demand for soda ash.
Price and profit
• Price: The price trend of the soda ash market is relatively complicated. In the short term, under the influence of long and short factors, the main contract disk maintains a narrow range of fluctuations above 1,400 yuan/ton. From a medium and long-term perspective, the loose supply situation is difficult to change, and the disk is still expected to go down.
• Profit: On March 13, the theoretical profit of soda ash produced by the ammonia-soda process in China was -51.42 yuan/ton, an increase of 0.1 yuan/ton from the previous month; the theoretical profit of soda ash produced by the combined soda process in China (double tons) was 260.10 yuan/ton, an increase of 66.50 yuan/ton from the previous month. The stabilization of thermal coal prices has eased concerns about the collapse of soda ash costs, but the price increase of raw materials such as liquid ammonia has not been significantly transmitted to the soda ash cost side, and the high profit of the industry is still a potential negative.
Industry Trends
With the further expansion of natural soda, ammonia-soda process and combined soda process production enterprises will accelerate the application of new processes, technologies and equipment such as energy conservation and carbon reduction, water conservation and emission reduction, and cost reduction and efficiency improvement in order to reduce production costs. Against the backdrop of intensified market competition and the country's promotion of energy conservation and carbon reduction and capacity adjustment, small and medium-sized chemical synthesis soda ash enterprises with high costs, high pollution and weak financial strength will face the risk of elimination in the future.
Post time: Mar-19-2025