Environmental policy tightening Two "pattern" of titanium dioxide or will change

Recently, the national environmental policy tightening, on December 5th, the State Council issued the "13th Five-Year" environmental protection plan "plan, clearly puts forward the" 12 binding targets to protect the ecological environment in 13th Five-Year "and the 13 expected index ; formulating three pollution prevention action plan construction, environmental governance battle started.

Under the pressure of the environmental protection, on December 5th, Panzhihua high tech Zone companies wasted vanadium titanium industrial wastewater to Jinsha River, which caused to the pollution ,was exposed by CCTV financial channel "economic half-hour" column . On December 3rd, the inspection teams leaded by the party members of the provincial Environmental Protection Offic went to Panzhihua to supervise the rectification.On December 4th, a joint investigation team (the provincial Environmental Protection Office of Panzhihua municipal government and the enterprises in the park) investigated the enterprises one by one, to date, has been discontinued rectification 28 enterprise, register 30 cases, issued the penalty decision 16 copies, 5 cases transferred to public security organs, 2 persons were administrative detained. Inspection team also requested Panzhihua to improve the city's environmental problems comprehensivly, to carry out the investigation, remediation, to develop practical solutions and a clear time limit for rectification.

Environmental issues so quickly spread to the titanium dioxide industry, small and medium titanium dioxide enterprises in Panzhihua area were so worried and scared about this tendency. On the other side, the situation of leading enterprise of domestic titanium dioxide “Billions” is totally different, on December 2nd, there was a brokerage doing exclusive investigation to”Billions” .On December 6th, the company announced the main product price raised by 1000 yuan / ton. On December 7th, the company finished the annual bonus. Will the pattern of future Titanium dioxide industry change? At the same time, will the supply and demand pattern of titanium dioxide industry change?

Panzhihua region is the important place for domestic titanium concentrate-titanium dioxide industry chain. Panzhihua area has a capacity of about 4 million tons of titanium concentrate, 600 thousand tons of titanium dioxide, accounting for nearly 15% of the titanium dioxide production capacity, and currently only Panzhihua and orient titanium industry area driving in Panzhihua area, involving about 300 thousand tons of production capacity, which brought larger short-term shock.

And in the year 2016, the upward tendency of titanium dioxide has been established.After a downturn in 2015, titanium dioxide soon rised into the upward channel, the titanium dioxide prices have risen about 60% compared with the beginning of the year, remained a rebound momentum while the domestic economy was not good enough. It is because that the titanium dioxide enterprises reduced the production in the year of 2015, and the downstream demand rises, environmental supervision is becoming tighter, high cost and many other factors driving together. At present, there are even people in the industry said, the market has no anatase titanium dioxide with the price lower than RMB 13000/ton ,and rutile titanium dioxide with the price below RMB 15000/ton."

If the burst of environmental events did not happen, titanium dioxide prices may be more stabilized at the end of the year , but on the current situation, more than 10 companies have announced price increase in December, and the amount of increase even more than that of previous. The price increase 1000-1500 yuan / ton was very shocked. The downstream distributors also lost at the end of this year. The "X" factor already broke the pattern of market supply and demand, but the duration is still unknown.

                                                                                                                              By Betty