Soda Ash Weekly: Soda Ash Prices Steady Down, Market Supply Continues at a High Level (Issue 13, 2025)

01 Industry News This Week

"Southern Alkali Industry Gathers in the New Year to Layout the Battle for Breaking the Deadlock in 2025"
In the festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival, Southern Alkali Industry has already sounded the clarion call for progress. On the afternoon of February 5, the company held a New Year's work deployment meeting, based on the present and looking to the future, to carefully plan and layout for the efficient and orderly advancement of various tasks in 2025. The meeting was chaired by Xia Youhui, deputy secretary of the company's party committee and general manager. Members of the company's leadership team and the main persons in charge of various departments and workshops gathered together to discuss development plans.

The meeting deeply analyzed the development trend of the soda ash industry in 2025, as well as the opportunities and challenges faced by the company in its operations. In the current complex, changeable and competitive market environment, the company will further reduce the manufacturing cost of soda ash as a key task and make every effort to promote it based on in-depth considerations of cost control and market competitiveness.

To achieve this key goal, the meeting made meticulous planning and deployment of the recent key tasks of the production system and related departments. By optimizing procurement channels, optimizing process indicators, technical transformation, low-chlorine white mud technical transformation, low-chlorine white mud promotion, increasing light ash development efforts, increasing by-product salt application and technological breakthroughs, each decision strives to implement policies accurately to ensure that the company's annual business plan goals are achieved with efficient execution.

The company's leaders emphasized that at the beginning of the new year, all employees must take the attitude of "starting and sprinting" to highlight new responsibilities and show new actions. Specifically, we must work hard in the following four aspects.

First, go all out to get off to a good start: All employees need to seize the day and quickly devote themselves to work, steadily advance various tasks, and create a strong working atmosphere of spurring horses and shifting gears to speed up within the company, laying a solid foundation for the work throughout the year.

The second is to grasp the key points and get off to a good start: All departments should plan in advance, carefully sort out various major tasks and key tasks, and make arrangements and implement them as soon as possible.

By breaking down the work into smaller parts, formulating a reverse schedule and a differential rolling plan, we can ensure that each task can be carried out in an orderly manner, and achieve step-by-step and steady progress.

Third, we should consistently implement: we should continue to do a good job in various cost reduction and cost control tasks, which is the key to the company's competitiveness in the fierce market competition.

All employees should seize the opportunity, work hard, and use the established ideas, goals and paths as a guide to further stimulate the fighting spirit, courage and tenacity, ensure that all tasks are effectively promoted in the overall coordination, and effectively implement all decision-making arrangements.

Fourth, we should race against time to break through: according to the work requirements put forward by Jing Guangjun, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of the Group, when he came to Nanjian for research before the New Year, we should speed up planning, and come up with a work plan for optimizing business operations and transforming development before the end of February, so as to explore new paths and directions for the company's long-term development.

The convening of this New Year's work deployment meeting has drawn a clear blueprint for the development of Nanfang Alkali Industry in 2025. I believe that with the joint efforts of all employees, the company will be able to overcome difficulties, achieve the established goals, and create more brilliant achievements in the new year.

《Sanyou Soda Ash Safe and Smooth Operation during the Spring Festival》
Spring is the first of the year, and everything should be done first. At the beginning of the new year, the company thoroughly implemented the spirit of the group's staff representative meeting, with the fighting attitude of "starting is sprinting, starting is a decisive battle", closely focusing on key tasks, making precise efforts, and working hard to show new responsibilities and achieve new achievements on the new journey.

After the Spring Festival, facing the sudden "late spring cold", the company's production system strengthened process operations as a means to enhance the "immunity" of safe production during the winter and escort stable production. 

In order to actively respond to the extremely cold weather, the front-line positions strengthened the monitoring of compressed air dew point and the implementation of anti-freeze measures, and timely adjusted the operating parameters of carbonization, distillation and other links according to temperature changes; actively responded to the slag slurry limit, optimized the working conditions of core processes such as carbonization, distillation, and ash kilns, and timely adjusted the various indicators of heavy ash, while fine-tuning the operation to highlight cost reduction and efficiency, and achieve stable and low-consumption operation of the system.

"During the Spring Festival, the company set up 'red envelope inspection signs' at key production equipment to make production inspections during the festival both powerful and warm."

It is understood that in order to ensure stable production during the Spring Festival and strengthen inspections, the Production Technology Department specially set up a link to unveil the signs and draw red envelopes on the inspection route, using New Year red envelopes to motivate employees to strengthen production fine operations. The stable production during the festival has set a good start for adjusting the product structure after the festival and speeding up the delivery rhythm after the festival.

In 2025, the company plans to implement 17 infrastructure technical transformation projects, focusing on key links such as production bottlenecks, equipment stability, and product quality improvement to dig deep into the cost reduction potential. These short-term and fast-paced technical transformation projects from the front line are also a weapon for tackling efficiency in 2025.

Among them, the comprehensive transformation of carbon filter system index optimization and improvement, as a technical transformation project that directly reduces production costs by optimizing indicators, is being planned intensively. The project introduces a belt alkali filter to participate in the production process, which can effectively reduce the water content of heavy alkali after centrifugation. "With the reduction of water content, steam consumption and power consumption will also decrease simultaneously. This is a technical transformation project that will benefit the long term."

Zheng Junxing, a third-level expert and director of the heavy alkali workshop, said. Before the Spring Festival, the project completed the process design and bidding for major equipment, and was carried out in an orderly manner according to the plan.

In addition, technical transformation projects such as high-calcium water recycling, water system process optimization and transformation, and comprehensive energy-saving technology transformation of the cooling alkali system are all working from the source to "return every gram of energy to the warehouse". 

The new year starts a new journey, and we will work hard again. All cadres and employees of the company muster the spirit of "competition", put on the state of "fighting", and press the "fast forward button" of the New Year with all their strength, and strive to run the "first baton" of the New Year.

02 Soda ash market analysis

2.1. Soda ash market analysis

This week, the domestic soda ash market was weak overall, and prices in some regions were lowered one after another. As of Thursday this week, the mainstream price of light soda ash remained at 1,400-1,700 yuan/ton, and the price of heavy soda ash was 1,500-1,800 yuan/ton.

The operation of soda ash enterprises remains high, and with the commissioning of new production capacity of some enterprises, the comprehensive supply of the market has further increased; while downstream demand is still weak, enterprises are not active in purchasing intentions, and some enterprises maintain rigid purchases, soda ash manufacturers receive relatively flat new orders; some manufacturers adopt flexible order acceptance methods to promote sales, market transaction prices are loose, low-priced sources increase, and the overall wait-and-see sentiment is strong, soda ash prices continue to be under pressure.

This week, some soda ash manufacturers have successively quoted new order prices, and the new order prices have been reduced by about 50-100 yuan/ton. Some manufacturers have accumulated inventory more significantly, and the market is buying high and not buying low, so the weak fundamentals of the soda ash market continue.

In terms of futures, the overall soda ash futures price remained narrowly volatile during the week. The current soda ash market is facing strong supply and inventory pressure, which has a strong suppression on the upper space of the disk. However, there has been no new large-scale contraction on the demand side of soda ash, rigid demand support still exists, and the expected repeated problems of subsequent large-scale maintenance also disturb the market sentiment fluctuations. In the short term, before actual demand increases or new expectations of rising prices stimulate speculative demand, soda ash may maintain a volatile pattern and wait for new drivers and subsequent supply disturbances and policy expectations to be fulfilled.

Forecast for the future market:

1. There are maintenance plans for individual devices in the future, which will affect market supply;

2. Downstream enterprises will gradually recover, and market inquiries will also gradually recover;

3. Affected by the imbalance between market supply and demand, the soda ash market will operate steadily and weakly.

2.2. Comparison of soda ash market prices

03 Statistics of soda ash process profits this week

3.1. Soda ash process profit situation

As of February 13 this week, the profit of the soda ash process was -114.50 yuan/ton, a decrease of 45.6 yuan/ton from last week; the profit of the ammonia soda process was -133.65 yuan/ton, a decrease of 76 yuan/ton from last week. The cost-end price fluctuated downward during the week, while the price of soda ash from the soda ash process continued to fall, and the profitability of enterprises further deteriorated.

3.2. Trend of profit of soda ash production

04 Maintenance and operation of soda ash enterprises this week

4.1. List of soda ash enterprises' equipment

4.2. Operation rate statistics of soda ash enterprises during the week

This week, the operation rate of soda ash industry was about 87.50%, a decrease of 1.51% from last week. According to incomplete statistics, the output of soda ash manufacturers this week was about 720,500 tons.

05 Soda ash inventory statistics this week

This week, the total inventory of domestic soda ash manufacturers was 1.8788 million tons, about 1.8368 million tons last week, an increase of 42,000 tons from the previous month, a rate of 2.29%.

06 Analysis of upstream and downstream products of soda ash

6.1. Comparison of raw salt spot prices this week

This week, the domestic raw salt market price was stable and weak. As of Thursday this week, the mainstream ex-factory price of domestic sea salt remained at 290-390 yuan/ton, the mainstream ex-factory price of well salt was 290-380 yuan/ton, and the mainstream ex-factory price of lake salt was 270-290 yuan/ton. The demand for raw salt from downstream soda ash enterprises was average during the week, the delivery speed of raw salt manufacturers slowed down, and the price of raw salt remained stable for the time being.

6.2. Analysis of float glass market this week

The domestic 5mm float glass market was relatively stable this week, with small overall price fluctuations, ranging from -8 to 20 yuan/ton. Specifically, the price in the northwest region rose by 10 yuan/ton, and the market transaction was slightly flat; the price in North China rose by 10 yuan/ton overall, and Beijing, Tianjin and Tang rose by 20 yuan/ton to 1,310 yuan/ton.

The initial shipments of manufacturers were good, but the transaction remained stable in the second half of the week; while the price in Shahe area fell slightly, and the price of 5mm large plates fell by 8 yuan/ton to 1,244 yuan/ton, the market demand slowed down, and production and sales declined; other regions maintained stable prices, and the market trading sentiment was relatively calm.

Overall, some production lines in the float glass market resumed production during the week, and supply remained high; downstream demand was insufficient, and most deep processing companies resumed work after the Lantern Festival. 

The purchasing process was relatively slow, and the market lacked the motivation to chase the rise. In the short term, the float glass market will maintain a volatile consolidation trend.

Source | Boduoduo Data Group

Copyright Statement: This article is produced by Boduoduo Data Group. If you need to reprint it, please contact the staff for authorization (please indicate the source if you reprint it after authorization)