The lack of pricing power for coal tar pitch stems from oversupply

Looking back at this year's coal tar deep processing market, the product prices remained at a low level for most of the period. “The off-season is not prosperous during the busy season”. The situation has caused manufacturers to be rather cold, and the development has entered a bottleneck period. Most companies are in the long-term parking market stage, and the Dachang plant has stopped for maintenance. The number of times and time increased significantly, and the operating rate was around 40%, which was a significant drop from about 60% last year. The reasons for these problems were relatively high, and they were closely related to the product upstream cost pressure and poor performance of downstream terminal demand.

For the coal-tar pitch market that does not have the initiative in pricing, price rises and rises depend more on raw coal tar. According to the monitoring data of coal-linked coal chemical industry, raw coal high-temperature coal tar appears two dials of “Little Spring” market this year, April 12th. The national average transaction index was 2750 points, a year-on-year decrease of 17.14%. The national average trading index of 2818 points on October 8 increased by 8.09% from the same period of last year. Cost pressures pushed up the price of coal-tar pitches, and the presence of coal pitch increased. Hysteresis, the high price of coal tar pitch this year appeared in mid-April and late October. In mid-April, medium-temperature coal tar pitch was 2650-2700 yuan/ton converted to coal tar pitch 2750-2800 yuan/ton, and in the second half of October, the second height of coal tar pitch was high. The spot price in the venue is 2,550 yuan/ton, and the price is 2,700-2,750 yuan/ton. Due to the deeper bargaining power in the downstream, coal tar pitch is more difficult to push.

Due to the macroeconomic recession at home and abroad, downstream demand is very weak, domestic aluminum prices have continued to slump, electrolytic aluminum has fallen into a loss in the entire industry, production of primary aluminum has risen against the trend, primary aluminum “overbenefit” has led to serious oversupply, weak downstream demand and high inventory levels. Against the background, aluminum prices are weak. Since March of this year, international aluminum prices have rapidly declined from high levels, causing major global aluminum producers to announce production cuts. Affected by this, the coal-tar pitched exports were changed. According to the manufacturer's report, the number of exports will obviously decrease after entering September, and domestic sales pressure will increase, and the current inventory will be relatively large. According to the import and export data from the customs, the number of coal bitumen exports has been declining month by month since May, 33,251.369 tons in September and 33,201.996 tons in January, which is the same as the 2012 export low. According to statistics, the amount of electrolytic aluminum spent coal tar pitch accounts for 51.37% of the total domestic coal tar pitch. The huge consumption gap gives coal tar manufacturers huge sales pressure. Manufacturers maintain contract customers, new orders are less, downstream pressure on inventory is large and profitability is weak. Under the circumstances, the price of coal tar is extremely suppressed.

The increase in production capacity in the downstream electrolytic aluminum market continues to be released, high end-product inventory and sluggish sales, and the two-phase influence restricts the rise in aluminum prices. At the same time, carbon manufacturers and electrolytic aluminum manufacturers are also cautious when purchasing raw materials. It is expected that the coal bitumen market will not be significantly increased in 2013.