Waste plastic bottles are increasingly sought after. Who is the promoter?

With rising resource prices and inflationary pressures, old plastic bottles have also become targets of speculation and investment.

Since October, the sharp increase in commodity futures has driven the enthusiasm of the entire market. Resource prices for cotton, rubber, plastics, copper, steel, chemical fiber raw materials, terephthalic acid and so on have surged, and some have even broken through history. At the high point, not only has the corresponding spot price increased sharply, but the price of used resources has also skyrocketed. The new financial reporter learned from a number of waste recycling companies that the current iron plate has risen from 8 cents a pound to 1.1 yuan pound. , Aluminum also rose from the original 4.4 yuan / kg to 5.5 yuan / kg, (Editor's Note: The waste recycling industry often measured in units of pounds.) Plastics, newspapers and other scrap prices are also rising ferociously. The end of the waste recycling chain is correspondingly transmitted to the upstream companies. The price of the old plastic bottle is also widely used for recycling, and it can be used as a raw material for chemical fiber production.

Plastic changing clothes

A chemical fiber company in the suburbs of Tianjin, the reporter saw the process of "turning waste into treasure": Here, waste plastic bottles after high-temperature cooking and cleaning, remove impurities, vacuum drying, through the high temperature melting spinning machine made of semi-finished fiber products. Then, it is bundled, stretched, heated and curled to increase elasticity, and finally cut and dried. The entire process is carried out in an orderly manner on the machine chain. According to the person in charge of the company, the demand for fiber has recently been strong on the market. The soaring of cotton led many cotton-related companies to adjust the proportion of cotton fabrics. Chemical fiber was the first major substitute and was conducted down. Its downstream raw materials plastics also escalated the price of the following trend. Naturally, waste plastic bottles were also included in this list. According to analyst Ren Zhongjie of Yide Futures, the rapid surge in cotton prices has already driven up the relatively low price of PTA (ie, refined terephthalic acid). The soaring price of polyester filaments downstream of PTA has made traders and manufacturers crazy. As prices continue to rise, the operating rate of the polyester fiber industry remains at a high level, and demand for PTA is stable. The continuous new record of cotton has driven the demand for polyester staple fiber to soar. The polyester staple fiber plant has started to meet the demand of increasing the number of horse carts that will drive the increase in demand for PTA. The release of new polyester production capacity will also stimulate the increase in demand for PTA. In the upstream, crude oil and PX prices have continued to climb, which has played a cost-supporting role for PTA. Some companies with production technologies have also started to use waste plastic bottles to produce polyester fibers. “Now large plastic bottles are generally around 2 hair. They are 5 cents more expensive than before. Even so, many people are still reluctant to sell them. "The practitioners of waste recycling in the community told reporters.

According to Tianjin Rongxiang Recycling Related Personnel, general waste plastic bottles are recovered from individual waste collection stations and sold to several large waste recycling companies. These recycling companies will manage waste products for category management. To the same quality or even the same brand, and then sell different types of waste products to different companies to crush processing. According to industry insiders, 70% of plastic scraps of many chemical fiber and textile companies are purchased from various parts of the country, of which waste recycling and recycling account for a large proportion, and in addition, nearly 30% need to be imported from abroad. It is understood that general chemical fiber workshops will “eat” about 100 tons of plastic bottle fragments every day, and the loss rate of polyester staple fiber processed from plastic bottles is very low. A ton of plastic bottles has about 20,000 waste bottles. It can produce almost the same amount of fiber, the waste rate is very low, and the profit margin is very large.

The person in charge of Tianjin Chemical Fiber Co., Ltd. gave a rough calculation to the reporter: The waste plastic bottle sold by the peddler is about 1 centimeter, which is calculated according to 1 ton of 30,000 plastic bottles. The cost is 3,000 yuan/ton. The waste recycling company reclaimed it at a price of 8,300 yuan per ton, then processed it into chemical fiber and sold it at a price of 15,000 yuan per ton. In this small number of intermediate links, profits have increased by about five times. In the recent rise in the price of polyester, there have been a number of individual waste households selling goods.

Waste Plastic Bottle "Invested"

It is understood that since the plastic bottle was bullish in the industry, the competitive relationship between individual waste households has undergone subtle changes. From the periphery of several residential areas interviewed by reporters, there are two individual waste stations within a distance of less than 100 meters, and the price varies by a few points. According to practitioners, in fact, they are not only mutually exclusive, but also symbiotic. The relationship between supply and demand of “eat too little” also exists in contradiction. “Our repossession will sometimes be sold to the other side.” One of the smaller individual waste station owners pointed to a distant home site and told reporters: “As long as the price is reasonable, it will be the same for anyone else.”

As a result, an invisible regional network was formed. The waste plastic bottles of residents in a residential area will generally fall in the hands of a few fixed self-employed households. They will then resell them to slightly larger scrap yards. And those waste products are doing scattered recycling. The phenomenon of stocking has already begun to appear in this link. At present, the trend of rising plastic prices is obvious. Those scrapping households that have already taken stock have consciously participated in "investment." They buy at low prices and find the right time to sell. It is understood that since the end of September, since the start of the plastics and chemical fiber spot market, individual waste households have made a lot of money. According to industry sources, the individual recycling price at the end of the chain has risen by less than 50%, and it has been transmitted to raw material processing companies and has risen about 20% in the analysis of the current market price. The middle 30% of the price space has been recycled by each of them. eaten. Chemical fiber production and processing companies can not receive raw materials, can only increase the price recovery, but the higher the price of speculation is more aggravated bullish people's bullish psychological.

“In the past, small individuals would also sell waste plastic bottles directly here. Now there are a group of dealers. Their purchase prices are no lower than ours. We have cut nearly half of our supply.” A large recycling company employee Said. Recycling companies’ “non-stocking” directly affects the raw material sources of upstream chemical fiber processing companies. “The false supply gap caused by bullish stocks is another price pusher for waste plastic bottles in addition to cotton and chemical fiber prices.” An analysis of the relevant person in charge of a large chemical fiber processing company.