The Production of Nitrile Gloves in China

In China, nitrile glove manufacturing began at the beginning of 2000, and in recent years, sales and market share continued to grow. Compared with the production and manufacturing of PVC gloves, nitrile gloves have significantly higher standards in terms of production technology and production process, and the investment and construction cost of the production line is also far more than that of PVC gloves. There are corresponding technical application and financial barriers to entering the manufacturing industry of nitrile gloves.

Before the pneumonia outbreak, many production lines of nitrile gloves in China were in a state of suspension. After the global outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, the production lines were overloaded and started construction.

In 2020, the total production capacity of nitrile gloves in China will increase to 35.6 billion/year, an increase of 33.8% over the same period last year. The new production capacity is mainly 7 billion/year of Inke Medical and 2 billion/year of Qifeng New Material. In 2020, the annual output is about 33 billion, an increase of 34% year-on-year, with an average yield rate of 92.7%.

It is estimated that the production capacity of nitrile gloves in China will be higher than 285 billion per year in 2025. Nitrile gloves have a short construction period of about 1 year.

In China, nitrile gloves are included in the tariff code "40151900 vulcanized rubber gloves for other use" and "40151100 vulcanized rubber gloves for surgical use". In China, nitrile gloves are mainly exported to the international market, especially in the second half of 2020 due to the serious imbalance between foreign supply and demand, nitrile gloves are basically all exported. In 2020, China will import about 7 billion nitrile gloves, export about 30 billion and net export about 23 billion.

Nitrile gloves in China are still in the culture period of habit. China will consume about 10 billion nitrile gloves in 2020. Experienced several large-scale global epidemics of pneumonia, the people on the health issue is more and more highly attached. With the continuous attention to health problems, the gradual standardization and improvement of the basic health care system and the continuous guidance of relevant policies, the development space of China's medical grade nitrile gloves will be more and more large. It is estimated that the consumption of nitrile gloves in China will be about 20 billion in 2025, and the average annual growth rate of nitrile gloves consumption in China will be 14.9% in 2020~2025.

Nitrile gloves production process is mainly the use of cleaning hand mold, prepreg butyrene latex, leaching, rolling, dry and vulcanized rubber, chlorine washing, drying treatment, mold, quality inspection and packaging and other processing technology produced. The rubber is generally: with iron sulfide, zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, BZ, EZ, potassium hydroxide and other auxiliary materials by grinding, dispersion mechanism for 50% of the dispersion liquid standby. The latex, water, auxiliary material dispersion, color according to the prescribed formula into the latex mixing tank to carry out mixing.

Nitrile gloves are mainly produced in Malaysia, but the technology application has not been promoted in China. Disposable glove production equipment is not a standard equipment, which requires each manufacturer to independently research and develop design schemes according to its own technical level, and carry out very complex integration of hardware configuration, software, infrastructure, etc. The production line is efficient, stable and energy saving. At the same time, it is important to ensure product quality. The medical grade gloves also need qualification certification and qualification standards, and the quality and reliability standards are higher.

In addition, glove production and manufacturing of resources, environmental protection, land resources and other factors of production standards are higher, in order to reduce the cost of resources, the need to support the construction of heat and power co-generation project; In addition, because the production process needs liquid chlorine, it is necessary to have a chlor-alkali device or a stable source of liquid chlorine.