Has the Darkest Period of Refrigerants Passed?

On March 1, Deppon Securities released a research report on the basic chemical industry, which pointed out that the dark period of refrigerants has passed, the rapid expansion of high value-added fluoropolymers, and the fluorine chemical industry has ushered in a boom cycle.

The details of the report are as follows:

Fluorite resources are non-renewable scarce resources. As an important non-renewable resource, fluorite has limited reserves worldwide. At present, the global identified fluorite resource reserves are about 320 million tons, of which South Africa, Mexico, China and Mongolia rank first in the world, while Japan, the United States, India and other places basically have no fluorite resources; At present, the global production of fluorite resources is about 8.24 million tons, of which China is the world's largest fluorite producer, and its fluorite production is as high as 66% of the world's total fluorite production, while the United States, the European Union and other places are facing exhaustion of resources, and mining has stopped for the purpose of protecting limited resources. China's fluorite mining industry still has many problems, with the introduction of relevant policies, China's fluorite mineral mining conditions are gradually becoming stricter.

       China's electronic grade hydrofluoric acid has entered a period of rapid development, but the import dependence on high-purity grade categories is still high. Since 1931, China's anhydrous hydrofluoric acid has achieved industrial production, which has provided an important guarantee for the realization of domestic high-purity electronic grade hydrofluoric acid, and gradually broken the situation that electronic grade hydrofluoric acid is completely dependent on imports. China's electronic grade hydrofluoric acid production capacity is continuing to increase, with a domestic production capacity of 270,000 tons in 2020, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 15.4% from 2010 to 2020. Panels, semiconductors have high requirements for electronic-grade hydrofluoric acid, high technical barriers to preparation, and difficult to break through the process.

The year when the quota of the third generation of refrigerants ended, it gradually moved towards marketization. In 2020, China entered the base year period of the third generation of refrigerants, and domestic fluorine refrigerant manufacturers are expanding their market share by expanding production capacity in advance, reducing product prices to stimulate sales, etc., resulting in the temporary overcapacity of third-generation refrigerant products and fierce market competition. At present, the stage of substantial expansion of third-generation refrigerant production capacity has ended, downstream consumer demand has gradually recovered, the situation of oversupply has gradually improved, and refrigerant prices have entered the growth range. With the continuous improvement of industry concentration, it is expected that the profit performance of leading enterprises will gradually improve, and the industry as a whole will enter a boom cycle.