With the acceleration of the scale of China’s chemical industry, the scale brings homogenization more and more severe, and many powerful enterprises are actively laying out the consumer market in Southeast Asia, which can alleviate the concern of oversupply in the Chinese market by taking the lead in seizing the potential consumer market in Southeast Asia. Therefore, the current situation and development trend of the Southeast Asian chemical market has become the direction of high concern for the Chinese chemical industry at present. In this article, we mainly analyze the main types and sizes of chemicals exported from China to Singapore, so that we can see what chemicals are exported from China to Singapore?
Singapore imports the largest scale of oil and related products from China According to the statistics of chemical products exported from China to Singapore, oil and related products, in 2022, are the main products exported from China to Singapore. Among them, gasoline, ethanol gasoline and component oil exports to Singapore in 2022 exceed 6 million tons, while diesel, catalytic diesel and ethylene tar exports to Singapore exceed 2.5 million tons, marine fuel oil exports to Singapore exceed 1.5 million tons, and kerosene exports to Singapore exceed 800,000 tons. There is also a small amount of crude oil present for export to Singapore.
Although Singapore is an important transportation hub in Southeast Asia, but the number of its own refineries is relatively small, only Jurong Island Industrial Park, such as Mobil, Shell and other enterprises, and these integrated refining and chemical enterprises, they are mostly based on chemical production, oil production is less. Therefore, this also leads to the existence of a gap in the supply of oil products in Singapore, this part of the gap, relying mainly on the supplement of Chinese oil exports, and mainly from the main Chinese enterprises exports. Chinese exports of oil products and related products to Singapore have shown a continued growth trend in recent years. The development of Singapore’s oil refining industry has stagnated, while the economic development has brought about more demand for oil for residential and industrial vehicles. Therefore, Pingtou expects that in the long term future, Singapore’s oil products will be supplemented mainly from the Chinese market, and Singapore will become an important consumer market for China’s oil exports.
Aromatic solvent oils, mixed aromatics and related oil blending materials are the main chemicals exported from China to Singapore According to customs data, in 2022, China’s exports of chemicals to Singapore, aromatic solvent oils, xylene, mixed aromatics, hydrogenated xylene, non-aromatic hydrocarbons, mixed benzene under this one tariff code export volume of more than 40,000 tons, is the relatively large variety of chemicals in the scale of statistics to. Next is the oil additives, chlorinated paraffin, plastic blowing agent, zinc oxide, electrolyte, monoglycerides, epoxy resin, methoxyacrylate fungicides, hydrazine hydrate 2, liquefied MDI, F141B blowing agent, slurry under this tariff code, the scale of China’s exports to Singapore more than 30,000 tons. It can be seen that, from the scale of China’s exports to Singapore, excluding products directly related to oil products, oil blending raw materials are also the main export products. Among them, mixed aromatics, oil additives, non-aromatic blending materials, etc., after exported to Singapore, also mainly flowed to the oil products market. Therefore, Singapore’s products for oil products and oil blending materials are the main types of chemical consumption at present, and the purpose of their import is also to meet the local consumption demand for the refined oil market.
Water reducer, EVA film, methyl acetate and other special esters, MDI and other chemicals are the largest imports of non-oil products According to customs data, the scale of China’s exports to Singapore in 2022 exceeds 20,000 tons of water reducer, EVA film, CPP film, agricultural film, aluminized film, conveyor belt and other products exceed 15,000 tons, methyl acetate, ethyl acetate, sec-butyl acetate, ethylene glycol methyl ether acetate, carbonate vinyl acetate (VC), methyl ethyl acetate (EMC) and ethylene carbonate (EC) exported to Singapore exceeded 10,000 tons, and pure MDI exported to Singapore exceeded 0.83 million tons. From the perspective of China’s exports to Singapore of non-oil and related products of chemicals, they are mainly concentrated in water-reducing agents, acetate esters and fine chemicals, etc. However, the export scale is not high, and the export volume is generally around 10-20,000 tons, and the volume of individual products is only a few thousand tons. From this point, we can also see that Singapore’s own consumption demand for chemicals is not large, on the one hand, its own industry chain is complete, and there are not many missing links in the middle, so there is no need to purchase chemicals to make up the chain operation. The second aspect is that the consumption volume of Singapore’s chemical industry is not large and its own chemical supply can basically meet the needs of the local consumption market. Therefore, if Singapore’s chemical market continues to develop in the future, it will not be able to form a scale driven and chain complementary demand for chemicals if no large integrated enterprises are invested. As for the Chinese market, there is limited space for the export of Chinese chemicals to Singapore market.
Chinese chemicals and plastic products exist in the scale of re-export trade from Hong Kong in accordance with Chinese customs statistics show that the customs statistics caliber of China’s exports, and some chemicals exist in the case of China’s exports to Hong Kong and then re-export, and the main consumer market for re-exports to Southeast Asia, Singapore is an important re-export destination. Therefore, if we take into account the existence of re-export from Hong Kong, the overall export volume of chemicals exported from China to Singapore, among which related plastic particles, acetate chemicals and other plastic products, will also increase. It should be noted in particular that since the volume of chemicals re-exported from Hong Kong itself is not large, it will not have a significant biased impact on the conclusions of our current analysis.
Singapore Jurong Island is the largest concentration of chemical industry in Singapore According to the internet information, Singapore Jurong Island is an artificial island located off the southwest of Singapore and is also the largest outer island of Singapore with a total area of nearly 32 square kilometers, after a land reclamation project to connect seven small islands (Ayer Chaweng Island, North Serpentine Island, Merrimau Island, Ayer Mabel Island, Shakra Island, Little North Serpentine Island and Silaya) into one large island, three times larger than the original land area, by means of reclamation. Jurong Island is home to the operations of 95 major international companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, DuPont, BASF, Sumitomo Chemical and Mitsui Chemicals. The petrochemical industry in Jurong Island is divided into three main categories: firstly, refining and petrochemical (ethylene, chemical fiber) industry, represented by ExxonMobil, Shell, etc.; secondly, special chemical and liquid storage industry, represented by three major professional storage tank companies – Vopak, Oiltanking, Tanking, etc. Oiltanking), Tankstore; third is to provide services for the cluster of utility systems, the representative companies are Sembawang, Sembcorp Gas, etc. [3]. Among them, the refining and petrochemical industry to ExxonMobil, Shell and Singapore Petrochemical Company (PCS) as the leader, to the downstream development of synthetic resins, glycols, aromatics and other products.
Among Southeast Asian countries, Singapore is the country with the highest scale of chemical industry, the most complete industrial chain and the largest market in Southeast Asia, and also the most advanced chemical technology level. Singapore’s consumption market for chemicals is growing slowly, but the supply of chemicals is limited, which also provides a potential future consumption market and opportunity for China’s chemical exports to Singapore.
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