Polyester bottle chips are a type of polyester chip, chemically named polyethylene terephthalate, which is a downstream product of PTA and ethylene glycol. Polyester chips can be divided into fiber grade polyester chips, film grade polyester chips, and the bottle grade polyester chips that this article will introduce, namely bottle chips, according to their downstream applications. In daily life, bottle grade polyester chips are used in beverage and food packaging, as well as in construction, decoration, and other fields. The quality benchmark for the bottle slice contract this time is "Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) Resin for national standard bottles of the People's Republic of China". Due to the mature production technology and high degree of standardization of bottle slices, it is relatively easy to inspect and the quality gap is relatively limited.
Bottle grade polyester chips belong to downstream varieties in the polyester industry chain, and unlike short fiber and long filament products that often go to the textile industry for further processing, bottle grade polyester chips are basically in the near end use field.
Polyester bottle flakes are white granular solids at room temperature. Due to their good plasticity, transparency, and strong barrier properties, they are often used to produce bottle packaging containers, such as food and beverage packaging, and even daily necessities such as cosmetics packaging. According to their sub categories, they can be divided into water bottle grade, oil bottle grade, carbonate grade, and hot filling grade.
After the launch of polyester bottle chips, it truly achieved full industry chain support from oil products to PX, then to PTA, and finally to downstream products. Polyester bottle chip enterprises can carry out various risk management operations throughout the entire industry chain through the variety of products, such as ensuring production plans or locking in production profits.
Polyester bottle flakes are formed by polymerizing polyester base slices in a solid state and increasing viscosity. Polyester bottle chips have the advantages of safety, lightweight, and environmental friendliness, so they can maintain the quality of beverages, food, and other products for a long time. At the same time, their recycling value is also extremely high, making them one of the plastic materials with the highest recycling rate in the world.
To produce bottle grade PET, it is necessary to first produce conventional PET with an intrinsic viscosity of 0.66 to 0.68. Then, conventional PET needs to undergo solid-phase thickening under certain conditions to increase viscosity and achieve the viscosity of bottle grade PET. At present, the main processes for producing conventional PET are DMT method and PTA method. DMT method, also known as ester exchange method, uses dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) and ethylene glycol for ester exchange reaction, and then condenses into PET; PTA method, also known as direct esterification method, is a direct esterification method using terephthalic acid (PTA) and ethylene glycol as raw materials. There are two types of solid-phase thickening processes: vacuum solid-phase condensation method and inert gas fluidized bed continuous solid-phase condensation method.
Due to low raw material consumption, safe production, short process, and low engineering investment, the mainstream chemical reaction technology path in the domestic PET industry is direct esterification, which uses high-purity terephthalic acid (PTA) and ethylene glycol to directly esterify and condense into polyester. The current mainstream bottle grade PET production adopts a two-step synthesis process of polyester process and solid-state polymerization thickening process (CP+SSP). The polyester process (CP stage) uses PTA and ethylene glycol as the main raw materials, and under the action of a catalyst, the melt generated after esterification and condensation reactions is filtered to produce basic PET chips. The solid-state polymerization and thickening process (SSP stage) is a continuous solid-state polymerization process, in which PET condensation products with a certain molecular weight undergo condensation polymerization reaction in the solid phase to increase the molecular weight of the slices and improve the intrinsic viscosity. Nitrogen is used to remove by-products such as ethylene glycol and acetaldehyde, ultimately achieving the goals of thickening, dealdehydation, and improving crystallinity, resulting in the final bottle grade PET product.
In terms of cost, as polyester bottle chips are the same as other categories, the raw materials are PTA and ethylene glycol, with a ratio of 0.855 PTA and 0.335 ethylene glycol. In addition, manufacturers will also receive a certain processing fee on this basis, but the specific processing profit varies depending on the size of the manufacturer's equipment production capacity, production time, and fuel costs. Overall, the cost of bottle slices follows the cost of raw materials, and this year, with the increase of production equipment and optimization of equipment technology, the overall cost is also relatively stable, and there may be a continuous downward trend in the later stage.
In the past decade, bottle flakes have been in a process of capacity expansion. The global bottle flake production capacity has expanded from 30.87 million tons in 2019 to 37.86 million tons in 2023. Among them, the production volume of the devices in 2019 and 2023 was relatively large, with a capacity growth rate of around 15%. And the production has also achieved significant breakthroughs in recent years, with global production remaining above 31.7 million tons by the end of 2023 and overall supply developing rapidly. But in the past few years, due to the overseas epidemic heroes, the expansion of production capacity of many leading enterprises was limited, leading to increased investment in bottle tablet production capacity by local Chinese enterprises.
China is still the world's largest producer of polyester bottle flakes. As of the end of 2023, China's production capacity will account for 41% of the global production capacity, reaching 37.86 million tons. Five years ago, China's production capacity was 30.87 million tons, accounting for 34% of the global production capacity. In recent years, China's production capacity base and growth rate have both ranked first in the world. Outside of China, the largest production capacity is in North America, but the overall development growth rate has been relatively slow in recent years. In addition, Europe, South Asia and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other regions are also important producers of polyester bottle chips.
In addition, in recent years, due to the emphasis on the bottle tablet field in domestic investment, many manufacturers have formed cooperation and collaboration with foreign upstream and downstream manufacturers. After 2024, domestic facilities will gradually be put into operation abroad. Currently, among the world's major manufacturers, Yisheng, Sanfangxiang, CR, and Wankai are all based in China, with a relatively high proportion of production capacity. The overall concentration of the polyester bottle chip industry has also shown an increasing trend in recent years.
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