China's silicone production capacity of 3 million tons per year, ranking first in the world!


Over the past decade, other industries have introduced technologies to establish joint ventures or wholly foreign-owned enterprises, while the silicone industry has done little. Foreign companies attempt to monopolize and manipulate the silicone market in China. They do not transfer the production technology of methyl monomers, nor build factories in China, nor even have joint ventures in post-processing products. In this case, domestic enterprises have made breakthroughs in technology by burying their heads in research. In 1998, the 10,000-ton methyl monomer production unit of Lanxing Sparkling Chemical Plant operated normally, and the silicone industry in China has entered a rapid development stage since then.


Under the market economy environment, some methyl monomer production enterprises quit the field because of backward technology or industrial restructuring; while the backbone enterprises such as Starfire Chemical Plant, Xin'an Chemical Group Company and Jilin Petrochemical Company quickened the pace of development, and some enterprises of downstream organosilicon products and related industries also joined in. The construction of methyl monomer production units is in the ranks.


In the new century, the production of organosilicon monomers in the world has accelerated to transfer to China. In 2004, Dow Corning Co. of the United States and Wake Co. of Germany jointly established factories in China and invested in the construction of 190,000 tons/year siloxane projects in Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province. In 2006, China Bluestar Group acquired the silicone business of French Rhodia Company, and became the fourth largest silicone production company in the world; in 2007, Zhejiang Xinan Group and the United States. Guomaitu High-tech New Materials Group signed a joint venture agreement to build 100,000 tons/year silicone monomer project in Jiande, Zhejiang Province. So far, four of the world's top five silicone monomer manufacturers have achieved "Made in China".


With the continuous expansion of production scale, the technical level of silicone production in China has also been greatly improved. In 2006, the annual actual production of thermal vulcanized silicone rubber and room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber exceeded 100,000 tons respectively, which completely broke the situation that foreign products occupied most of the domestic market, and also achieved large-scale export of technology and products in high temperature rubber and room temperature rubber. By the end of 2017, the production capacity of methyl monomers in China will reach 2.7 million tons.


In order to pursue high-quality development, China's silicone industry has not been put into production in 2018. Through technological transformation and bottleneck removal measures, the existing enterprises have increased the national production capacity to 3 million tons per year, ranking first in the world, and China has become a truly large producer of silicone.


Source: Sinochem New Network