Three Drives Buttress the Market

Report by the "China Petrochemical News" on July 27, 2005

As the technology of producing bottle grade chips matures, our domestic construction of bottle grade chip project has come to a new high. The annual production of domestic bottle grade chips has increased more than 10 folds from 220,000 ten years ago to about 2,500,000 tons currently, but the demand of domestic bottle grade chips has increased from 260,000 tons to 1,500,000 tons, which means that each year about 1 million tons of the products are in excess in China, thus the market competition of bottle grade chip products has become more and more fierce.

Under this grim situation, however, the production and sale of the bottle grade chips produced by YCF go smoothly. Its gross profit of almost RMB100 million was realized in the first half of the year and the market share reached about 25%, which made it a highlight in the domestic bottle grade chip market.

First Drive: Develop New Products for Market Demands

At present, as the profit-gaining space of ordinary products in the domestic bottle grade chip market is very limited, it is only by developing new products that have a ready market that more profit can be gained. Supported by the Marketing & Distribution Centre and the Technology Centre, the YCF Bottle Grade Chip Production Centre has implemented harsher measures of bottle grade chip production, quality management, research and development.

It has also highlighted the differentiation effect of the products and the brand effect. Furthermore, it has made more profit from the differentiation products by taking advantage of the centralization of technology and human resources.

YCF attaches great importance to raising bottle grade chip products' competitiveness in the market, so it pays close attention to the market demands, and continuously develops and turns out new products that will meet the customers' needs. The application of PET in plastic steel band has already emerged in foreign enterprises in recent years, but it has just started in China.

Many customers both at home and abroad need this product badly. According to relevant documents, the intensity of PET as package strip is 1/6 of that of steel, but is far more than that of PP strip. Besides, it is easy-to-make, good looking, durable, environment-friendly and easy-to- recycle. After knowing this market information, SYCF organizes the Bottle Grade Chip Production Centre to collaborate with Yizheng Business Department of China Petrochemical International Co., Ltd. (the Business Department) and accelerates its contact and communication with domestic and foreign plastic steel band manufacturers including those in Australia.

Moreover, it carries out the trial production in small amount with the Technology Centre. When the foreign consumers showed their satisfaction after tryout, the Bottle Grade Chip Production Centre, the Marketing & Distribution Centre and the Business Department soon contacted foreign customers and signed the continual delivery contracts.

Afterwards, YCF organized the Bottle Grade Chip Production Centre to develop and produce specialised polyester chip for plastic steel band in large equipment. As the specialised polyester chip for plastic steel band is a product with high viscosity, the Bottle Grade Chip Production Centre has adjusted its crafts in time, which ensures that the development and production of plastic steel band succeed at the first trial.

YCF is the first company who has produced the new specialised polyester chip for plastic steel band on the continual large equipment. In addition, it has successfully launched it to the market home and abroad. As of the end of April, YCF had exported nearly 560 tons plastic steel band bottle grade chips to Australia alone.

Second Drive: Stabilize Product Quality to Satisfy Customers

In the fierce market competition, high-quality product is an important weapon to raise market competitiveness. Comparing with the good quality of the same products in China, and making full use of its advantage as a state-cognized bottle grade chip laboratory, the Bottle Grade Chip Production Centre does research in the progressing property of bottle grade PET, tests and analyzes the bottle base and the performance of the bottle in all aspects.

By accumulating experiment data, it has improved the quality appraisal system of the bottle grade chips and found out the quality defects. Moreover, it has strengthened the control over the key process and craft parameter that might influence the product quality. By doing so, it continuously optimizes the crafts and formula, strengthens the quality improvement and improves the product quality.

All this has resulted in the reduction of product complaints.

In order to avoid the quality fluctuation of the bottle grade chip products, the Bottle Grade Chip Production Centre organizes relevant technicians to strengthen the quality control in the production process and deal with accidental problems on the spot. Once, the operating personnel spotted a small amount of powder in the finished bottle grade chip products in the process of packaging.

The Centre paid close attention to the issue. In the check, they found that powder is prone to be produced in transporting. After they immediately optimized the craft parameters of all slice transporting systems to reduce the transporting pressure and gas flow. They also strictly standardized the operating procedures of packaging and avoided powder in the process of packaging.

Besides, they adopted special methods to get rid of the powder out of the system at the discharge outlet. So far, the powder on the cruse flakes has decreased a lot after a series of trials.

Third Drive: Raise Equipment Burden to Seize Market

As summer comes, the bottle grade chip market has come to its golden sales season, the Bottle Grade Chip Production Centre (the Centre) seizes this opportunity to gradually raise the burden of 200,000-ton bottle grade chip producing equipment, makes every effort to seize market share and continually enlarge profit-gaining space.

Based on load elevating in producing regular products, the Centre gradually solves problems in elevating the load when producing differential products. During the load lifting process, problems including vulnerability of some parts, pollution of the water system and shortage of dicer cutters appeared in the production apparatus due to overload.

To guarantee a secure and stable production under high load, many bottlenecks impinging on load increase had to be overcome. The Centre, by making full use of the professional restructuring, summoned technical capacities to tackle the key problems concerning the bottlenecks in the load increase of the 200,000-ton bottle grade chip apparatus.

Problems were detected and solved in time, and many such bottlenecks were overcome, which ensured the secure and stable production by the apparatus.

So far, the load of the Centre's 200,000-ton/year bottle grade polyester apparatus has reached a daily output of 700 tons, or 110% of the originally designed apparatus load. The new production apparatus has achieved the maximum single-line production capability at home. The bottle grade chip products manufactured with this apparatus, especially the differential products, are markedly popular on the market.

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