At the 4th China ABS Resin Technology Seminar held on August 31st, Yang Weicai, Vice President of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association and President of the China Engineering Plastics Association, sounded an alarm to ABS resin production enterprises when analyzing the industry situation: ABS resin production will face four serious problems during the 11th Five Year Plan period.

Firstly, the bottleneck of raw materials. During the 11th Five Year Plan period, although PetroChina and Sinopec built and expanded a batch of styrene and acrylonitrile units, most of them also arranged downstream projects such as polystyrene, styrene butadiene rubber, and acrylic fiber. The raw materials available for ABS resin were limited, and most enterprises still needed to import a large amount. Due to the continuous rise in oil prices, the petrochemical industry has entered a period of high oil prices. Styrene, acrylonitrile, and butadiene not only have quantities but also prices, which will become bottlenecks in the development of ABS resin.

Secondly, environmental constraints. In the production process, not only wastewater and exhaust gas need to be treated, discharged up to standard, and produced cleanly, but also flame retardants and other additives (including heavy metals and halogens) should be avoided from polluting the environment during the ABS resin modification process. Recently, the European Union proposed that production enterprises should bear the obligation to recycle plastic from waste electronic products and household appliances, which undoubtedly increases production costs and also increases the social responsibility of enterprises.

Thirdly, technological competition. The challenges posed by the continuous ontology process to traditional processes, as well as the challenges posed by modified PP and high impact PS to traditional products, require production enterprises to continuously develop various specialized materials, expand their scope of use, and vigorously reduce costs in order to avoid falling into difficulties.

Fourthly, standard alignment. Our products must move closer to international standards and gradually align with them, in order to break through the limitations of foreign technical trade barriers on our products.

It is understood that in the past five years, the demand for engineering plastics in the domestic market has grown at a rate of 25% to 30% annually. In 2003, China became the world's largest consumer country, while the production of the top five engineering plastics in China could only meet about 15% of the demand, and synthetic resins mainly relied on imports. Although the production of ABS resin in the domestic market has increased from 299000 tons in 2000 to 915000 tons in 2004, with an average annual growth of 41.2%, it still lags far behind the growth in demand.