Analyst Zhang Hui
[Introduction] Production enterprises in the PX industry generally adopt vertical integration strategies, specifically manifested as: Forward integration: Some companies expand their industrial chain to polyester products, achieving extension into terminal application fields. For example, Dongying Weilian Chemical enhances its market competitiveness in the application segment by extending its production chain to polyester products; Backward integration: Other enterprises choose to expand upstream, supporting refining operations for raw material supply to ensure stable raw material procurement. Companies such as Rongsheng Petrochemical, Hengli Petrochemical, and Shenghong Petrochemical have enhanced their raw material self-sufficiency capabilities through building their own refining facilities, strengthening enterprise competitiveness while improving overall industrial chain stability and synergistic effects.
The value chain, enterprise chain, supply-demand chain, and spatial chain constitute the four dimensions of the industrial chain, which form the industrial chain through mutual integration and equilibrium processes.
From a supply chain perspective, integrated PX facilities (crude oil-PX) profits in 2025 remain among the leaders in industrial chain revenue generation, stimulating enterprises' enthusiasm for production expansion and significantly enhancing China's PX supply capacity. Through backward integration strategies, enterprises extend their product lines to the refining and chemical industry, resulting in unbalanced characteristics in value chain distribution.
From a spatial chain perspective, PX's main consumer groups are concentrated in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Liaoning regions. In recent years, benefiting from the guidance of national seven major refining and chemical base policies, supply and demand matching in these regions has continuously improved, showing clear coastal construction trends. The polyester industrial chain layout in Zhejiang and Jiangsu regions is becoming increasingly complete, with market share expected to further increase.
From an enterprise chain perspective, during the development of the polyester industrial chain in recent years, mergers and acquisitions of polyester variety enterprises have been relatively frequent, while mergers and acquisitions at the polyester raw material end have been relatively limited. The main reason for this phenomenon is that production equipment reorganization has advantages at the polyester product end but does not possess significant production advantages at the polyester raw material end.
As the intermediate hub connecting petrochemicals and polyester, PX's overall self-sufficiency capability has improved throughout the year, with capacity growth rate showing high negative correlation with profits. In the future, the polyester industrial chain will further deepen backward and forward integration, with "demand-based pricing" gradually becoming the new industry model, promoting overall industry development toward more rationalized and healthier directions.
The vast majority of China's PX enterprises are refining-integrated, with raw material xylene primarily self-supplied. Therefore, aromatics complexes show good overall profitability, while short-process xylene isomerization processes have poor profitability. In recent years, the industrial chain has experienced poor cash flow toward downstream, with compressed profit margins at the product end while raw material end profits remain favorable. The main reason is that as PTA enterprises implement comprehensive forward and backward integration layouts, enterprise industrial chain lengths are expanding. According to traditional logic, longer industrial chains cover higher profits.