Thread Content
According to Sinochem New Network, the 2025 National Inorganic Silicides Industry Annual Conference and Industry Development Forum was held in Beijing recently. Zhou Fahai, vice president of the China Inorganic Salt Industry Association and president of its Silicides Branch, stated at the meeting that overall, the upstream supply side of the silicides industry remained stable, while downstream application areas continued to expand, enabling the entire industry to achieve good economic results by 2025. Products in the five major segments of the silicide industry remain profitable. The profit margins of silica, silica sol, and molecular sieves are the highest in the industry; the production volumes of sodium silicate, silica, and silica sol increased by 7% to 8% on a year-on-year basis; the profit margins for silica and silica sol are even better, averaging 15% to 20%. Specifically, in the field of silica gel, the concentration among leading companies is high, and there is a clear trend toward lower carbon emissions in production processes. The use of low-carbon raw materials such as those obtained through carbonization methods, biomass methods, and tailings has seen significant growth. Among high-end products, the annual production capacity of silica gel produced by vaporization methods has exceeded 200,000 tons, showing rapid growth. Affected by the implementation of safety and environmental regulations as well as the gradual release of production capacity, the sodium silicate industry is facing increased inventory pressure. The prices of its core raw materials, namely soda ash and quartz sand, remain low, providing relatively stable cost support; on the technical front, continuous improvements are being made, with submerged combustion kilns and pure oxygen combustion technologies being further adopted, and efforts to capture and utilize carbon dioxide from exhaust gases are also ongoing. The expansion of the silica sol industry is expected to be significant, with an additional 300,000 tons of production capacity set to be added in the next 3 years. Silica sol is the fastest-growing product in the silica-based products category; its current annual production is around 600,000 tons, with the annual production capacity set to exceed 1 million tons. The new production capacity will be primarily located in Hubei province. With the advancement of application technologies, the demand for silica sol in industries such as catalysts and paints is rising rapidly. In the field of catalysts and molecular sieves, Luoyang Jianlong Weinao is growing at a rapid pace as a leading enterprise, with a gross profit margin on its related businesses reaching as high as 30%. The annual production capacity of sodium metasilicate is around 500,000 tons, with an annual output of about 400,000 tons. Due to the high entry barriers in the hazardous chemicals industry, new entrants are limited, which results in good overall profitability for this sector. Looking ahead to 2026, Zhou Fahai stated that the entire industry needs to further focus on tasks such as structural adjustment, technological innovation, and safety and environmental protection, in order to lay a solid and stable foundation for the start of the 15th Five-Year Plan period. On the one hand, the entire industry should use green technologies to transform and upgrade traditional industries, promoting their intelligence, sustainability, and integration. Enterprises should be supported in adopting digital and intelligent technologies. It is necessary to emphasize the industrial characteristics more strongly, take into account the actual conditions of industries and enterprises, and continue to develop new forms of productive capacity during the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, using advanced and appropriate technologies to reform these industries. Enterprises that have the necessary resources should, on the basis of further improving the properties of new materials, and in light of their own circumstances as well as industry trends, establish a new pattern of development. On the other hand, the industry should leverage the advantages of various transportation routes such as those connecting the north and south, east and west, as well as land, sea, rivers, etc. By making efforts in areas such as technology, equipment, products, resources, environment, and safety, it can develop a new-era silicon-based industry that is self-sufficient, secure, reliable, and capable of competitive differentiation.