Hosted by Asiapolymer Consulting and supported by leading polyamide and raw material manufacturers, the 2026 Bio-Based Nylon & High-End Polyamide Innovation Forum will be held on April 28. The event will cover a full spectrum of industry topics: transformation and high-end upgrading of domestic nylon manufacturers, industrial policies and market trends for bio-based nylon, technological and commercial advances of bio-based nylon and its key monomers, as well as downstream applications and market prospects of short-carbon-chain bio-based nylon (PA56, PA510) and long-carbon-chain bio-based nylon.
On March 18, the shortlisted candidate for the first construction bid section of Hunan Petrochemical’s caprolactam and polyamide unit upgrading project was publicly released. The winning candidate is Baling Petrochemical Dacheng Maintenance & Installation Co., Ltd. The planned construction period lasts 243 days, with an estimated contract value of RMB 10.3381 million (tax excluded).
The tender scope covers construction work (including dismantling) and warranty services for the whole upgrading project, alongside technical support for intermediate handover acceptance (to meet feeding requirements), overall handover acceptance, special inspections and final completion acceptance. Key facilities to be renovated include the ammoximation unit, caprolactam unit, ammonium sulfate unit, intermediate tank farm for ammoximation and caprolactam, waste liquid treatment unit, three-waste treatment unit, polyamide unit, raw material and product tank yards, wastewater treatment plant and metering & statistics center. The maximum pipeline operating pressure reaches 4.2 MPa.G.
As of December 15, 2025, Hunan Petrochemical’s 600,000 tons per annum caprolactam industrial chain relocation and transformation project marked its second full year of stable operation. The site has produced nearly 1.16 million tons of caprolactam and over 310,000 tons of polyamide (Nylon 6) chips, alongside around 4.8 million tons of auxiliary chemical products including ammonium sulfate, hydrogen peroxide, cyclohexanone, refined ethanol, nicotinic acid, hydrogen and liquid ammonia.
Energy efficiency has seen notable improvements: comprehensive energy consumption for synthetic ammonia and the integrated caprolactam unit has fallen by 20 percentage points and 10 percentage points respectively compared with the initial commissioning phase. The facility also achieves extended continuous operation cycles. Its caprolactam production line has run uninterruptedly for more than 730 days, setting a new national industry record for stable runtime.
Taking pure benzene and coal as primary feedstocks, the project adopts domestically developed 3rd-generation SE coal-water slurry membrane wall gasification technology for coal-to-hydrogen production. Cyclohexanone is synthesized from pure benzene and hydrogen via cyclohexene esterification hydrogenation technology. Hydrogen peroxide is manufactured from hydrogen and air through slurry-bed anthraquinone process. Caprolactam is then produced from cyclohexanone and hydrogen peroxide via ammoximation and liquid-phase rearrangement, which is further polymerized into polyamide. The entire industrial chain was fully commissioned in December 2023.
Hunan Petrochemical has completed lab-scale research on PA612, MXD6 and high-temperature-resistant PA10T, with product performance matching mainstream commercial benchmarks. Three pilot facilities are currently under construction: a 2,000 tons/year continuous polymerization pilot line for PA612, a 2,000 tons/year continuous polymerization pilot line for MXD6, and a kilogram-scale PA10T pilot plant. Pilot verification is expected to finish within two years, and the materials will target application scenarios in drones and industrial robots.
Looking ahead, the company plans to build commercial-scale production lines: 10,000 tons/year PA612, 20,000 tons/year MXD6 and 5,000 tons/year PA10T. Upon completion, stable mass production will be realized to supply high-performance polyamides for drone and robotic equipment in bulk quantities.
Against the backdrop of China’s Dual-Carbon targets, bio-based chemicals are identified as a core growth segment for new chemical materials and a key transformation focus for the petrochemical sector during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.
Conventional fossil-based nylon (PA6, PA66 and similar grades) now faces multiple headwinds worldwide and domestically: rapid capacity expansion, heavy reliance on imported crude oil, severe product homogeneity and shrinking profit margins. Developing differentiated bio-based nylon and high-performance polyamides via technological innovation has become the decisive competitive advantage for chemical manufacturers.
Demand for high-end polyamides, heat-resistant polyamides, functionalized and bio-based polyamides keeps rising across high-end textiles, automotive lightweighting, electrical & electronics, photovoltaic energy storage, new energy vehicles and 5G communications. End-users impose stricter requirements on material heat resistance, dimensional stability, chemical resistance and sustainability.
Industrialized mass production of bio-based platform chemicals such as bio-long-chain dibasic acids, pentamethylenediamine and long-chain aliphatic diamines lays a solid foundation for next-generation bio-based nylons and specialty polyamides, including long-carbon-chain nylon, high-temperature-resistant nylon and special copolyamides.
Leading domestic and international players have established large-scale bio-based nylon capacity: Domestic manufacturers including Cathay Biotech and Yipin Biotech produce short-carbon-chain bio-based nylon grades PA56 and PA510. Global chemical giants Arkema, BASF, Evonik, DuPont and Kingfa Science & Technology also operate relevant production lines. BASF, DOMO Chemicals, Ascend Performance Materials and other suppliers partially replace fossil feedstocks with bio-based raw materials, producing partially bio-based PA6 and PA66 through mass balance certification.
Hosted by Asiapolymer Consulting with support from multiple leading polyamide and raw material suppliers, the 2026 Bio-Based Nylon & High-End Polyamide Innovation Forum will convene on April 28. Key discussion themes cover transformation and high-end upgrading paths for domestic nylon enterprises, policy frameworks and market outlook for the bio-based nylon sector, technical and industrial breakthroughs of bio-based nylon and its core monomers, as well as downstream application potential of short-carbon-chain bio-based nylon (PA56, PA510) and long-carbon-chain bio-based nylon.
