ABSTRACT
Generally, oleochemicals mean chemical products and their derivatives made of
natural fatty oil such as palm oil, tallow and coconut oil. The narrow definition of
oleochemicals in this article mainly refer to chemical products like fatty acids, fatty
amines, ammonium chlorides and glycerine, which are widely used in every aspect of
national production and life in the form of cation surfactants.
With rapid growth of national economy and increasing market demand for
oleochemicals, oleochemical industry in China has made rapid development in recent
years. At the beginning of the 1990s’, Boxin took the lead in bringing in technology and
equipment from Europe for 200000 mts of fatty acids and fatty amines, which indicated
new era of oleochemical industry in China. Soon afterwards, many international giants
in oleochemical field invested and built their factories in China based on their
consideration of powerful potential marketing demand. Fatty acid capacity has reached
3m mts by end of 2010 comparing 0.2m mts in early 1990s’. Now China has exceeded
Malaysia and Indonesia and become the largest fatty acid manufacturing base in the
world. As for fatty amines, before 2000, Akzo Nobel in Holland and Degussa in
Germany were in the position of oligopoly in global market. But during 2000 and 2011,
Boxin, as a representative of the new entrants grew quickly and gradually extended its
market share, thus strengthened its leading role in many emerging markets including
China. However, radical changes have taken place in both macroscopic and
microcosmic environment in oleochemical industry in China recently. Chinese
oleochemical enterprises, Boxin , for example, sank into an embarrassed situation due to
the product structure and technology difference between advanced foreign players and
not so competitive with plants invested by Malaysia and Indonesia in the integration of
up and down stream of industrial chain and industry synergy and no scale effect as
well. Besides, comparing to those famous international oleochemcial players, Chinese
players have their disadvantages like no brand effect, low local market share, poor R&D
and technique, imperfect system for sales and business and benefit, and lack of
experience in internationalization.
Taking Boxin for example, using analysis on its macroscopic and microcosmic
environment and theories on supply chain, synergistic effect and value chain, and also
tools like PEST and the Five-force model and SWOT and BCG ,the writer analyses its
current situation and management strategy, competitiveness and development tendency
to work out its main functional strategy in sales, HR and supply chain management to
correspond with its whole strategy structure thus to enhance its leading role in
oleochemical field. Meanwhile, the writer hopes this research will be of help to other
domestic oleochemical players in making strategy and promote the healthy development
of oleochemical industry in China.