Structural changes in raw material supply highlight investment value

Event: Domestic benzene prices have recently risen, driving the rise of downstream maleic anhydride products. The profitability of traditional coking benzene maleic anhydride has been greatly affected, but the cost advantage of n-butane maleic anhydride has been highlighted, which has a larger economy and technology than benzene maleic anhydride. Advantages have attracted greater attention from the market. We invited industry-related manufacturing companies to hold a conference call to exchange and discuss with investors on the hot market issues of n-butane maleic anhydride.

The main conclusion: the spread of spread between coking benzene and n-butane will be the trend of the domestic ** shortage of supply and demand, long-term dependence on imports, and a large part from the refinery equipment such as ethylene cracking, the current international ethylene cracking raw materials become important trends , **Supply reduction, domestic supply and demand contradiction expanded; while coking benzene and ** spread narrowed, following ** price increase, coking benzene prices will remain high for a long time, supporting the high price of maleic anhydride.

In comparison, the demand for LPG fuel in China due to the replacement of natural gas began to shrink, the supply gap of LPG began to ease, and at the same time, the production of shale gas in the United States rose rapidly, driving the output of shale gas condensate to increase, and the supply of LPG increased. With the supply of liquefied gas in the Middle East, the global supply of liquefied gas is sufficient and the increase in the price of n-butane is inhibited. Normal butane and coking benzene will maintain large spreads over the long term.

The raw material of n-butane can be obtained from the liquefied gas produced by the domestic refinery and can also be purchased from abroad. When the domestic liquefied gas distributor purchases from Saudi Aramco, n-butane and propane are sold together. The domestic liquefied gas is a mixture of C3 and various C4, etc. The price is slightly lower than the international price, but it needs to separate and separate the normal butane equipment, which increases the separation cost. According to the current domestic liquefied gas price of 7,000 yuan / ton, coupled with the separation cost of 600 yuan / ton, after-tax cost of n-butane is 6,800 yuan / ton, and procurement of foreign raw material prices are similar.

Coking benzene maleic anhydride and n-butane maleic anhydride process comparison raw material unit consumption comparison: coking benzene maleic anhydride single-ton benzene consumption in 1.2-1.25 or so, according to the current coking benzene tax 9000 or so, tax-free raw material costs 9200 yuan / Ton or so; n-butane n-butane consumption of maleic anhydride is about 1.1, not including the tax cost of raw materials 7500; raw material costs of the two routes differ by nearly 1700 yuan.

Operation cost: n-butane process can produce 10 tons of steam as a byproduct of maleic anhydride. Coking benzene can produce less than 3 tons of steam by-product. The difference between the two is more than 3 times. After manpower, fuel consumption and other operating costs, The total cost of the coking benzene maleic anhydride is more than 10,000, and that of the n-butane maleic anhydride is only 7800. The current tax price of maleic anhydride is 12,000, and the tax price is 10,300. The cost advantage of the n-butane method is significant.

Fixed-asset investment: Most of the domestic n-butane maleic anhydride use the mature technology provided by Huntsman Company, supporting complete waste gas treatment and other waste equipment. The fixed assets investment for the 80,000-ton-scale project is 700 million yuan. According to the depreciation of 15 years, the annual depreciation for a single ton is 580 yuan; the domestically-used coking benzene maleic anhydride device has the largest scale of 20,000 tons, and 80,000 tons requires the construction of 4 sets of equipment, domestic coking benzene. The heat recovery and environmental protection investment of the legal device is relatively small. The total investment scale exceeds 500 million yuan. With a 15-year depreciation, the depreciation cost per ton of maleic anhydride is 400 yuan.

Product quality comparison: Coking benzene is refined from co-production of crude benzene in coke production, which contains more impurities from raw coal and will eventually remain in maleic anhydride products, and the international market will accept domestic coking benzene maleic anhydride. It is not high; but n-butane is produced by the by-products of petroleum processing or oil field associated gas. The quality of raw materials is good, and the purity of maleic anhydride produced is high and it belongs to high-end products.

Economic comparison: Based on the current tax price of maleic anhydride 12,000 yuan/ton, plus the depreciation of fixed assets, the current coking benzene maleic anhydride is close to break-even, plus three costs, the coking benzene method is in a loss state, and Alkane maleic anhydride plus by-product steam, still has about 2,500 yuan of gross profit.