In the first quarter of 2013, China’s tio2 industry has gone through a “cold winter”. However, despite the abundant new capacity home and abroad, tio2 prices are still expected to rise as demands for titanium dioxide might keep increasing in accordance with the development of downstream industries such as construction and plastics.

Rapid process of urbanization has boosted housing and private car industry, and consequently made the demands for titanium dioxide increasingly huge. Statistics show that domestic demands are likely to grow at an annual growth rate of 10 percent by the end of 2015.

Prosperous plastic industry and massive paper production also contribute greatly to the development of tio2 industry. Content of titanium dioxide in plastics are usually 0.5 to 5 percent, and 1 to 3 percent in paper. But upscale paper products like decorative paper, which account for 37% of the total paper production, may contain more titanium dioxide up to 20 to 40 percent.

China has become a tio2 exporter since 2011, but domestic per-capita consumption is still far from that of developed countries. By the end of 2011, China’s per-capita consumption of tio2 is 1.16kg while that of European and American countries is up to 4kg. There is a lot of room to grow in Chinese market, given that tio2 demands will increase to 4.11 million per year if per-capita consumption reaches 3kg.