As one of the important economies in Southeast Asia, Vietnam’s economy is currently in a take-off stage, and the living consumption level of its people has also been significantly improved. In recent years, the demand for plastic products in the Vietnamese market has become increasingly strong, and polypropylene, as one of the raw materials for the production of plastic products, has a relatively broad space for development.

With the rapid expansion of China’s polypropylene production capacity, the total production capacity is expected to account for 40% of the global production capacity in 2023, and the globalization status is rapidly improved, but due to the lack of product structure and cost advantages, China’s polypropylene globalization scale is large but not strong. Vietnam as the main region to undertake China’s industrial transfer, the demand for general materials is very strong.

In the future, China’s polypropylene is still in the rapid expansion cycle of production capacity, in the context of slowing demand growth, has entered a comprehensive surplus stage, and exports have become one of the effective ways to resolve domestic oversupply. Due to the lack of local supply, the rapid growth of demand, coupled with obvious geographical advantages, Vietnam has become one of the main export destinations of China’s polypropylene.

As of 2023, Vietnam’s total domestic polypropylene production capacity is 1.62 million tons/year, and the output is expected to be 1.3532 million tons, with a serious shortage of supply and a large amount of demand dependent on imported resources.

From the perspective of Vietnam’s imports of polypropylene, after rising from the import base of Vietnam’s polypropylene in 2020, it still maintains a high scale. On the one hand, it is affected by increasing trade frictions; On the other hand, to undertake a large number of Chinese industrial transfer, the following three years of epidemic on Vietnam’s demand has been inhibited. In 2023, Vietnam’s import volume maintained a high growth rate, and the import scale increased significantly.

From the perspective of China’s polypropylene export to Vietnam, the export scale and volume continue to grow significantly. Although with the increase of domestic supply in Vietnam and the impact of low-cost sources such as neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia, there is a decline in 2022. In the future, with the rapid expansion of China’s polypropylene production capacity, price competition has intensified, while domestic product research and development efforts have increased, product quality has improved and the proportion of high-end products has increased, the comprehensive competitiveness of China’s polypropylene products will be greatly improved, and China’s polypropylene export space will continue to increase in the future.

In 2023, China’s polypropylene accounts for the first place in Vietnam’s main import source countries, and with the improvement of the competitiveness of Chinese products in the future, the future is expected to continue to expand in the high-end products.

Looking to the future, under the influence of factors such as increased policy dividends, geopolitics, labor advantages, low threshold for plastic processing products and low technical barriers for general-purpose products, Vietnam’s plastic products industry has entered a highlight moment. As a major source of resources, China’s exports to Vietnam will continue to grow at a relatively high scale in the future, and Chinese enterprises are expected to accelerate their industrial layout in Vietnam.