The industrial salt market is in short supply and local companies need to speed up the development of high-end products.

Industrial salt is a basic chemical raw material. Its main ingredients include sodium chloride, sodium nitrite, etc. It appears as a white solid, is easily soluble in water, is easily deliquescent, and has no odor. Industrial salt is a raw material for the preparation of basic chemical industrial products such as chlorine, soda ash, caustic soda, and ammonium chloride. It is widely used in food, medicine, ceramics, glass, dyes, metallurgy, machinery, chemicals, petroleum, papermaking, pesticides, fertilizers and other fields. .

my country is rich in raw salt resources, including sea salt, lake salt, well salt, rock salt and other salt species, which are distributed in Shandong, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Qinghai, Hubei, Xinjiang, Chongqing, Hunan, Hebei, Jiangxi and other provinces and cities. Huge resource reserves have laid a good foundation for the development of my country’s industrial salt industry. At present, my country’s cumulative output of industrial salt has exceeded 45 million tons. However, due to the impact of the epidemic and environmental protection policies, my country’s industrial salt production is currently in a continuous decline.

Soda ash and caustic soda are the two major application scenarios of industrial salt in my country. Among them, soda ash is widely used in medicine, electronics, machinery, food and other fields; caustic soda is widely used in metallurgy, petroleum, papermaking, printing and dyeing, leather and other fields. Currently, driven by the rapid development of the domestic soda ash and caustic soda market, the demand for industrial salt market continues to increase and the scale continues to expand.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the national soda ash (sodium carbonate) output in 2022 will be 29.202 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 0.3%; the caustic soda output will be 39.805 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 1.4%. In this context, according to the “In-depth Market Research and Key Area Research Report on the Global Industrial Salt Industry 2023-2028” released by the Industrial Research Center shows that the domestic industrial salt market demand in 2022 will be close to 100 million tons, and the demand will remain at a high level. Among them, the demand for industrial salt in the two alkali markets will be around 89 million tons.

Judging from the current supply and demand situation, the current domestic demand for industrial salt is much higher than the production, and the market is generally in short supply. At the same time, affected by the increasing demand for industrial salt in the downstream market, the market demand for high-end industrial salt is increasing. However, currently, domestic high-end industrial salt mainly relies on imports, and domestic products are mostly mid- to low-end products. Therefore, in the future, local industrial salt companies need to accelerate the improvement of their technical level and the development of high-end products to promote the continuous improvement of high-end industrial salt production capacity, thereby accelerating the process of import substitution in the high-end market.

Industry analysts said that industrial salt is a basic chemical raw material and one of the important raw materials for soda ash and caustic soda. Against the background of the steady increase in the output of caustic soda and soda ash, their market demand continues to increase, and the industry development prospects are good. However, at present, my country’s industrial salt products are still mainly concentrated in the low-end market. In the future, local companies will need to continue to develop new products to accelerate the pace of import substitution in the high-end market. The main industrial salt companies in my country include China Salt Chemical, Xuetian Salt Industry, Suyanjingshen, Yuntu Holdings, Jiuda Salt Manufacturing, Haimeng Salt Chemical, etc.