Resumen de Eti Soda’s supply myth: : how the market never moved to oversupply
Prices have remained resilient despite forecasts of a crash following the addition of 3 million tonnes per year of capacity.The expansion of Eti Soda’s Beypazari asset and the Kazan Soda greenfield project, first announced in January 2013, has been the sole focus of the soda ash industry for many years, to the extent that the annual soda ash conference was once described to Industrial Minerals as “the Eti Soda roadshow.” The fall in Chinese output coincides with a spike in demand for soda ash in the East Asian country, which grew at 7% in 2017 according to Ciner Resources, a subsidiary of Ciner Group which is the world’s largest natural soda ash producer and the parent company of both Eti Soda and Kazan.At the same time, the arrival in Europe of soda ash produced in the United States, before the Turkish plants came online, softened the shock to prices that could have been created by reduced Chinese supply, because it meant that demand was still being met. Chinese unpredictability “[Demand for soda ash in] China grew much faster than anyone anticipated,” said Rob Fennell, global marketing and business development manager at American Natural Soda Ash Co (Ansac).China accounted for 40-45% of world demand, and that grew by 4%, which is significant,” Fennell said.
