Since 2025, the butyl rubber market for insulating glass in East China has shown characteristics of green, high-end, and diversified development under the dual catalysis of "dual carbon" goals and industrial upgrading. As a core consumer market in China, the consumption of butyl rubber for insulating glass in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Anhui will reach 42000 tons in 2024, accounting for 45% of the total national demand. It is expected that the market size will exceed 760 million yuan by 2025, a year-on-year increase of 16.8%, with the proportion of green and low-carbon products increasing to 32%.
Upgrading the policy system and constructing a market development framework. The East China region has taken the lead in forming a three-dimensional policy system of "energy-saving standards+environmental control+quality supervision": Shanghai has specified that the sealing life of new building insulating glass should reach more than 30 years by 2025, Jiangsu Province has tightened the VOC emission limit of butyl rubber to below 50g/L, Zhejiang Province has launched the "Quality Improvement Action for Hollow Glass", and the product qualification rate in the production field will reach 98.7% in the first half of 2025. Driven by policies, the demand for high-end products continues to be released. In 2024, the sales volume of photovoltaic specific butyl rubber in the Jiangsu Zhejiang Shanghai region increased by 75% year-on-year, and the penetration rate of two-component self vulcanization products exceeded 65%, far exceeding the national average level.
Green production transformation has become the core competitiveness of enterprises. Zhejiang Xinhui, as a national level green and low-carbon factory, invested 65.076 million yuan to implement energy-saving transformation of the entire process of butyl rubber. Through pinch analysis technology, the raw material refining unit was optimized, reducing steam consumption by 28%; Developing a by-product recovery technology for hydrogen bromide, increasing the efficiency of bromine utilization from less than 50% to over 98%, and recovering nearly 1800 tons of n-hexane annually, significantly reducing VOC emissions. In Jiangsu, Nantong Junfeng New Materials has raised the testing standard for the sealing life of butyl rubber for photovoltaics to 75 years through formula optimization, far exceeding the industry's basic requirement of 25 years. Its product has a low water vapor transmission rate of 0.12g/m ² · d and has been supplied in bulk to leading photovoltaic enterprises. This type of green high-end product has a significant premium ability, with prices 25% to 30% higher than traditional products and still maintaining strong sales.
Photovoltaic and BIPV scenarios open up incremental space. The advantage of the photovoltaic industry cluster in East China is the expansion of a new track for butyl rubber: Zaozhuang, Shandong Province, relying on the supporting advantages of TCO glass, butyl rubber and other industrial chains, has become a pilot project for distributed photovoltaic development on rooftops throughout the city. In 2024, the local consumption of butyl rubber for photovoltaics will exceed 8000 tons; The rapid implementation of BIPV (Building Integrated Photovoltaics) projects in Yancheng, Jiangsu and Hefei, Anhui has driven an increase in demand for specialized butyl rubber. These products need to meet both sealing performance and photovoltaic conversion efficiency requirements. Currently, the market supply is mainly dominated by local enterprises. According to estimates, each square meter of double glass photovoltaic modules requires 0.8 to 1.2 kg of butyl rubber. By 2024, the total amount of butyl rubber used for photovoltaic module packaging in East China will reach 21000 tons, accounting for 52% of the national demand in this field.
Collaborative solution of industrial chain to overcome high-end supply bottlenecks. In response to the long-term dependence on imported high-end halogenated butyl rubber, East China enterprises have achieved breakthroughs through technological breakthroughs and industrial chain integration. Zhejiang Xinhui, relying on its independently developed high-throughput cyclone separation technology, has increased the production capacity of brominated butyl rubber by 100%, and its products have passed the EU CE certification, with an export proportion of 18%; An enterprise in Jiangsu cooperated with colleges and universities to develop nano modified formula, which improved the ultraviolet radiation resistance of the product by 40%, and successfully replaced imported products into the curtain wall project of Phase II of Shanghai center Building. On the raw material side, the 300000 tons/year high-performance polyisobutene plant of Zhejiang Petrochemical has been put into operation, increasing the self-sufficiency rate of butyl rubber raw materials in East China from 62% in 2023 to 78% in 2024, and reducing the proportion of raw material costs by 8 percentage points.
Quality control and intelligent upgrading build a solid foundation for development. Leading enterprises are building a full chain quality control system: Zhejiang Xinhui has established an ISO 50001 energy management system, which enables real-time monitoring of all process parameters through an energy management center; Nantong Junfeng has introduced a visual analysis and detection system to achieve online detection of rubber particle anisotropy and six sided AI quality inspection, with a stable product qualification rate of over 99.5%. The intelligent transformation is advancing synchronously, and many enterprises in Jiangsu have adopted fully automatic gluing equipment, which controls the thickness error of the glue strip within ± 0.5mm, improves production efficiency by 40%, and effectively meets the strict requirements of building curtain walls for sealing accuracy.
Industry experts point out that the butyl rubber market for insulating glass in East China has entered a new stage of "quality competition+scene innovation". It is expected that by 2027, the proportion of green and low-carbon products in the region will exceed 50%, and the demand in the photovoltaic and BIPV fields will reach 40%. In the future, the industry will focus on three major directions: research and development of bio based butyl rubber. Currently, the bio based content of a pilot product from a certain enterprise in Zhejiang has reached 35%; The popularization of intelligent production has promoted the utilization rate of production capacity from the current 82% to over 90%; Cross border standard integration, establish a product evaluation system that synergizes building energy efficiency and photovoltaic efficiency. Under the combination of multiple advantages, the East China region is leading the national hollow glass butyl rubber industry towards high-quality development.
