In 2025, the supply and demand of POY polyester filament will be in tight balance, making differentiation and green development key for companies to break through the challenges.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, the domestic POY polyester filament market experienced a confluence of positive factors. Peak domestic demand, expanded export channels, and increased industry self-regulation combined to drive market inventory down to a low for the year, leading to a gradual recovery in corporate profitability. Simultaneously, against the backdrop of slowing industry capacity growth and continued consolidation, differentiation, green development, and intelligent transformation are becoming key directions for companies to build core competitiveness, and the industry is accelerating its transformation from scale expansion to high-quality development.

The comprehensive surge in demand became the core driving force of the POY polyester filament market. Entering the fourth quarter, colder weather coupled with the launch of the Double Eleven e-commerce promotion led to a peak in orders in downstream sectors such as knitting. Inventories in warp knitting and circular knitting machines fell to low levels, and tight shipments directly boosted demand for POY polyester filament. The export market also achieved breakthrough growth. After India canceled BIS certification in early November, leading domestic filament manufacturers saw concentrated purchases of their POY products from Indian customers, resulting in a surge in orders, with some specifications even experiencing overselling. Previous data also confirms the market's enthusiasm. In the first half of 2025, my country's polyester filament exports reached 1.7652 million tons, a cumulative year-on-year increase of 14.18%, with POY, as the mainstream product, continuing to contribute to export growth.

The optimized supply and demand structure directly drove the recovery of industry profitability. Industry monitoring data shows that the profit per ton of POY has recently stabilized at around 200 yuan/ton, escaping the profit pressure of some periods previously. Regarding inventory, as of the end of August 2025, the inventory days for POY products were only 17.8 days, a decrease of 5.2 days compared to the same period last year. This low inventory not only created room for companies to adjust prices but also supported the industry's operating rate to remain at a relatively high level of 89%, an increase of 4.7 percentage points year-on-year, demonstrating strong market resilience.

While market sentiment is recovering, the structural reforms on the industry's supply side continue to deepen. After a period of rapid expansion, the growth rate of polyester filament production capacity has slowed significantly, plummeting to 2.35% in 2024. New capacity additions in 2025 were mainly concentrated in leading companies such as Tongkun and Xinfengming, with the industry's CR6 concentration reaching as high as 87%. The industry self-regulation mechanism led by these leading companies is showing increasing effectiveness. Through flexible adjustments to operating rates, it has effectively avoided vicious competition and driven a significant rebound in price spreads for mainstream products like POY from their 2023 lows. Even amidst fluctuations in international trade in the first half of the year, the industry maintained strong profitability resilience. Furthermore, the recent launch of new projects such as Xinjiang Zhongtai Polyester's 250,000-ton/year direct-spun polyester filament plant will further optimize the regional distribution of domestic production capacity through coordinated supply chain development.

It is worth noting that differentiation and green technologies have become the core tracks for POY polyester filament companies to break through in the competitive landscape. The market demand for functional fabrics continues to rise. POY products, with their moisture-wicking, warmth-retaining, pilling-resistant, and stain-resistant properties, are highly favored by downstream high-end categories such as apparel and blankets. These high-value-added products are not only easy to dye and have stable colorfastness, but they can also partially replace imports, becoming an important driver of profit growth for enterprises. Green production has also become an industry consensus. For example, the direct esterification polymerization spinning process adopted by mainstream enterprises saves more than 37% energy annually compared to similar imported equipment. The application of clean technologies such as solution dyeing also makes POY products align with the trend of "green fiber" certification and meet the environmental protection needs of the global textile industry.

Looking ahead, industry analysts believe that the POY polyester filament market will continue to benefit from the recovery of domestic and foreign demand and the optimization of the industry structure. However, the pace of new capacity commissioning and the sustainability of downstream autumn and winter orders still require close attention. In the future, companies that master core technologies, possess differentiated product matrices, and have green production capabilities will have a greater competitive advantage in the industry's transformation from "quantitative change" to "qualitative change."