Nissan masks are over 100 million, why is n’t it good to buy them ?
Daily production capacity of masks exceeded 100 million pieces! As soon as the news came out, the "mask anxiety" that had been troubling consumers had an initial relief. However, as the pace of resumption of labor and production accelerates, the demand for masks for the public has gradually increased. Everyone finds that masks are still not easy to buy! What is the reason? How is the supply of masks? Has the capacity bottleneck been eased? Will the supply of masks remain "tightly balanced" for a long time? Economic Daily reporters investigated this series of issues.
Since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia outbreak, masks have been a topic of concern to everyone, and "a mask is difficult to find" has become a problem for many people. On March 2, a message from the National Development and Reform Commission that "the daily output of masks exceeded 100 million" has made consumers' "masks anxiety" initially relieved. However, in recent times, as the pace of resumption of work and production across the country has accelerated, the demand for mass masks has gradually increased, and it is still not easy for ordinary consumers to buy masks. When will this situation be completely solved? With many questions, a reporter from the Economic Daily conducted a survey on the production and supply of domestic masks.
Hardly a billion-dollar production capacity
This is an accelerated growth curve-in early February, China's daily output of masks exceeded 10 million, and in early March, its daily output exceeded 100 million. The daily output of masks ranges from 10 million to over 100 million, and it only took 1 month.
Data show that in early February, China ’s mask production capacity was about 20 million per day, with a daily output of more than 10 million. On February 22, the daily output of masks reached 54.77 million. On February 25, the national daily mask production capacity reached 72.85 million. The daily output reached 76.19 million. On February 29, including ordinary masks, medical masks, and medical N95 masks, the daily production capacity of masks nationwide reached 110 million, and the daily output reached 116 million.
It is not easy to get out of such a "growth line" in such a short period of time.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments have fully promoted the return to work and production, giving priority to ensuring the needs of mask companies in terms of labor, capital, logistics, and supply of key raw and auxiliary materials, and guiding enterprises to effectively do their own epidemic prevention, ensure safe production and product quality , Full-load production at full horsepower. The special work of expanding the capacity of medical masks has been started. Three batches of enterprises have been organized to increase production, expand production, and switch production through technological transformation, and increase the supply of masks. In order to relieve the worries of production of enterprises, the government will purchase the protective materials such as masks produced by enterprises to increase productivity and expand production capacity, and encourage local governments to introduce relevant support policies.
Everywhere is racing against time, and every effort is made to increase the production capacity of masks. For example, in Shandong, a major province in mask production, the Shandong Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology established a provincial-level unified scheduling mechanism in special periods, adopting a "one-to-one" production-oriented, "one-to-one" capacity increase, and "one-to-one" guaranteed operation mode to help Enterprises in production increase horsepower production, and holiday companies speed up production. Shenzhen has accelerated the promotion of “export to domestic sales”. If the original masks for export meet the medical standards of the importing country, they should be registered and filed with the market supervision department. After the filing, the Chinese labels will be put on sale in China. As of March 2, there were 339 mask enterprises of various types in Guangdong Province. The output of masks has soared from less than 100,000 per day to more than 20 million per day.
Faced with huge demand, many companies such as Sinopec, PetroChina, Foxconn, BYD and others have also "cross-border" production. Sinopec will use its own raw material production advantages to invest about 200 million yuan to build 10 meltblown cloth production lines. The raw materials produced can be used to produce 3.6 million N95 masks or 18 million medical flat masks. On March 9, Gree Electric announced the sale of masks. According to the purchasing rules, epidemic prevention materials are given priority to support the front line of anti-epidemic. The masks are drawn by lot after booking. Users who have made a reservation can purchase a box from KN95 protection disposable masks and disposable medical masks. The reporter saw that during the one-hour appointment period on March 10, the number of appointments exceeded 470,000.
Raw material bottlenecks have eased slightly
Despite the rapid increase, the gap in masks is still huge. According to the analysis of Huachuang Securities, there are about 530 million employed people in the secondary and tertiary industries in China. If there is one person per day, 530 million masks will be required one day after the return to work; in extreme cases, only the secondary industry + medical staff + transportation To resume work and resume production, 238 million masks are needed every day.
Wanshili Silk Digital Printing Co., Ltd. is the first batch of key civilian mask production enterprises in Zhejiang Province. It only took 6 days to complete the production line transformation, worker training, and mask proofing. Recently, the daily production capacity of Wanshili masks exceeded the one million mark. "The biggest problem now is melt-blown cloth, and the gap is 1 ton per day." A person in charge of Wansili Silk told reporters that one ton of melt-blown cloth can produce about 1 million masks. Now the company's melt-blown cloth can only be made for a few days.
Meltblown cloth is one of the core raw materials upstream of the mask production chain, and is called the "heart" of medical surgical masks and N95 masks. The sudden epidemic has made the meltblown cloth, which is rarely visited by many people, suddenly on the hot search list, especially as the output of medical masks continues to rise, the meltblown cloth has even become a commodity.
The reporter contacted several mask companies that issued "melt-blown cloth" urgently through the mini-program of the State Council client "Docking Area for Key Medical Prevention and Control Materials Production Process". According to reports, the average price of melt-blown cloth is about 20,000 yuan / ton. Since February, the price of melt-blown cloth has soared all the way up to more than 300,000 yuan / ton. "Even if the price is so high, it is impossible to get the goods!" The person in charge of a mask company in Changsha, Hunan admitted that if the melt-blown cloth can no longer be purchased, the workshop will definitely be discontinued, and this is not the case among peers.
The market demand is so huge, why has the capacity of meltblown cloth not been increased?
People in the industry helped journalists to calculate the bills. Under normal circumstances, a general medical surgical mask costs 1 layer (about 1g) of meltblown cloth, and a N95 mask costs 3 layers (about 3g) of meltblown cloth. Excluding production loss, a ton of meltblown cloth can produce up to 1 million medical masks or 300,000 N95 masks.
In recent years, the development of the domestic meltblown cloth market has been relatively stable, and the market capacity is also relatively limited. According to the statistics of China Industrial Textile Industry Association, in 2018 the national meltblown cloth production capacity was 83,240 tons / year, and the actual output was 53,523 tons / year, that is, about 150 tons of meltblown cloth can be produced per day. In 2019, the overall production capacity also maintained a relatively stable level. It should be noted that before the epidemic, the meltblown cloth used for medical purposes only occupied a small part of the output of about 150 tons per day. Most meltblown cloths are widely used in fields such as the automotive industry, filtering materials, and environmental protection outside of medical treatment due to their filtering, thermal insulation, and oil absorption properties.
After the epidemic, the demand for masks, especially medical masks and N95 masks, is in a state of blowout. As of now, the output of 110 million masks nationwide is more than five times the conventional output of masks before the epidemic. According to this calculation, since March, the domestic melt-blown cloth for mask production needs about 55 tons per day.
"As far as I know, the current supply and demand of meltblown cloth is basically in a tight balance." A park operation person in charge of the emergency production guarantee dispatch of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Zhejiang said that in addition to overtime production and supply of meltblown cloth enterprises At present, part of the meltblown cloth comes from the previous inventory, part of the production is transferred from the automobile, environmental protection and other industries, and overseas has also imported part of it as a supplement. As the production capacity of masks continues to expand, the price of meltblown cloth will certainly follow the market.
"The ones that are greatly affected by the supply of meltblown cloth are mainly small mask manufacturers and new mask companies that have just switched to production." The person in charge revealed that driven by factors such as high mask prices and the initiative of local governments, recent emergences have occurred in various places. A group of mask companies have no stable raw material supply channels, knowing that some small manufacturers of meltblown cloths have to set prices on the ground and are forced to chase high prices. Large meltblown cloth companies have stabilized their raw material prices under the overall arrangement of the government.
Long Can Information analyst Wang Canan said that in addition to the market supply and demand relationship, there are two other factors that determine the price of meltblown cloth: first, the supply of meltblown upstream raw materials-meltblown material, and the second is the meltblown cloth industry. Own capacity constraints.
It is reported that meltblown material is the upstream raw material of meltblown cloth, which is a product after modification of polypropylene. As of March 2nd, the total domestic polypropylene production capacity reached 26.32 million tons / year, and the market supply was adequate, but there were only about 10 domestic modification companies capable of mass producing meltblown materials, and the overall production capacity was very limited.
"However, from the perspective of the polypropylene meltblown material market, Sinopec has joined the industry, Yanshan Petrochemical, Shanghai Petrochemical and private enterprise Donghua Energy are also producing meltblown materials, and the supply side has shown a positive growth." Wang Canan believes In the future, overall polypropylene meltblown materials can support meltblown cloth production demand.
From the perspective of the meltblown cloth industry, it is still difficult to break through the production capacity bottleneck in the short term. According to rough statistics, there are currently only 103 companies that cover meltblown cloth, mainly in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan and other provinces. The reporter contacted a meltblown cloth company in Nantong, Jiangsu. Liu Shengyong, the deputy general manager of the company, admitted that compared with the mask production line, meltblown cloth has high production technology and long investment cycle. "But the meltblown cloth market itself is not large To invest in a new production line will cost tens of millions of yuan, and the production line will take 2 to 3 months to complete at the earliest. It is difficult to say how the market will be after the epidemic, and the investment risk is relatively large. "
However, some companies are more optimistic about the future meltblown cloth market. A person in charge of a non-woven fabric company in Qingdao, Shandong said that from the development situation of the epidemic, there is still a large gap in the supply of masks worldwide. It should be said that the production and sales of masks are guaranteed. In addition, the state has implemented a temporary collection and storage system for mask production. All key epidemic prevention materials such as masks are left to the government, and there is not much concern about expanding production capacity.
"Dynamic adjustment" will become the norm
People in the industry believe that although the production capacity is expanding, the current production of masks by enterprises is prioritized to meet the needs of key populations in key regions, and it has less access to retail channels. This is one of the reasons why ordinary residents have difficulty purchasing masks at this stage.
Chen Hongyan, Secretary-General of the Medical Devices Branch of the China Pharmaceutical Materials Association, analyzed that at the beginning of the epidemic, the inventory of the original mask manufacturers was almost divided up by the dealers and the market before the Spring Festival. After that, key medical materials such as masks were uniformly managed and allocated by the government. To meet the needs of the hospital. In addition, although the domestic epidemic situation is improving, the epidemic situation abroad is getting worse, and some mask resources may be transferred to foreign trade. These are the reasons why masks are hard to find on the market.
But in general, with the easing of the epidemic and the expansion of production capacity, the "difficult cover" is expected to gradually ease.
Shengguang Group is a large-scale private enterprise in Henan Province that is dominated by medical device manufacturing and pharmaceutical trade. The relevant person in charge of Shengguang Group told reporters that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has helped enterprises coordinate more than 50 mask production equipment. It is expected that they will be in place in mid-March, when the daily production capacity of masks will increase from more than 300,000 to about 6 million.
The person in charge said that the company had five or six original repair engineers, and the local government helped coordinate dozens of technical experts in the local state-owned enterprises to help debug the equipment. "Now new equipment is coming one after another, and the output of old equipment is steadily increasing. If it goes well, masks will be put into use for epidemic prevention and control soon after sterilization and analysis."
Cong Liang, Secretary-General of the National Development and Reform Commission, previously introduced that the supply of masks can be divided into two stages. The first stage is mainly to respond to the epidemic situation and to protect front-line medical staff. The focus is to expand the production of medical N95 masks. In the recent stage, with the explosive growth in the demand for masks after the resumption of work and resumption, the focus of maintenance and supply work has gradually shifted to general medical and general masks. Actively coordinating key raw materials and equipment companies such as meltblown non-woven fabrics, mask machines and parts and components to speed up production, meet the urgent needs of production capacity expansion of mask companies, and improve the efficiency of the entire industrial chain is one of the focus of power supply in the recent stage.
At present, in addition to Tibet, 30 provinces have successively added new mask production lines, and at the same time, new production lines have been put into operation. Cong Liang expressed the belief that with the joint efforts of all parties, China's mask production capacity will continue to maintain a rapid growth, and better meet the needs of epidemic prevention and control and resumption of production.
It is necessary to increase production and capacity and use it rationally. Ou Xiaoli, director of the Social Development Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that with the orderly advancement of work and production and the gradual restoration of living order, the demand for ordinary masks other than N95 will also increase rapidly, and the contradiction between supply and demand will increase. It is unrealistic to reach the "how much and how much" of masks right now. Therefore, it is necessary to use masks scientifically as needed to reduce unnecessary waste.