The thermometer of the polyester filament market suddenly malfunctioned on September 3. The average production-sales ratio of sampled enterprises stood at only 25.8%, a sharp drop of 13.3 percentage points from the previous trading day's close—meaning more than 70% of production capacity failed to translate into actual transactions. Polymerization costs remain high, factories attempt to raise prices, but downstream users vote with their feet, leaving the market buying exceptionally sluggish.
Signals Behind the Production-Sales Data
The single-day ratio of 25.8% is not a total collapse but an extreme divergence. Public sample data shows wide disparity among enterprises: some achieve as high as 90% or 70%, while many record ice-cold figures of 0%, 5%, or 10%. This polarization reveals not the disappearance of overall demand but highly selective purchasing behavior—only enterprises with price advantages or differentiated products secure orders.
More alarming is the month-on-month decline. A single-day drop of 13.3 percentage points is rare in recent polyester filament trading records. It suggests that any pulse restocking from the previous trading day has quickly fizzled, with downstream buyers retreating back to wait-and-see after brief probing. For factories, inventory pressure is silently accumulating, and persistently low production-sales ratios will directly test cash flow resilience.
The Tug-of-War Between Costs and Demand
High polymerization costs remain the core variable in current price negotiations. Upstream raw material supply, influenced by international oil prices and PX supply fluctuations, makes cost support difficult to loosen in the short term. Polyester filament manufacturers are thus forced to follow price increases, attempting to pass cost pressures downstream. However, downstream weaving enterprises show clear resistance—visible in inquiry frequency and transaction pace.
This tug-of-war indicates an imbalance in profit distribution across the industrial chain. Upstream has cost bottom lines, downstream has order constraints, and polyester filament manufacturers in the middle are squeezed from both sides. If costs continue to rise while demand remains weak, the price transmission mechanism may partially fail, forcing factories into a painful choice between cutting production to support prices or reducing prices to move volumes.
Chain Reactions in Regional Industrial Belts
Polyester filament production and consumption are highly concentrated in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. The operating rates and procurement rhythms of textile clusters like Shengze and Keqiao directly reflect terminal order sentiment. The current low production-sales ratio implies that downstream weaving enterprises in these belts are reducing raw material inventories to hedge risks.
For water-jet loom factories in Shengze, raw material procurement cycles are forced to shorten, with just-in-time buying becoming mainstream. Fabric traders in Keqiao prefer price-pressuring inquiries over bulk stocking. If this cautious sentiment persists, it will reversely transmit to upstream polyester plants' operating decisions, even affecting PTA and MEG demand expectations, forming a negative feedback loop.