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Bromine – a business with significant entry barriers, and sizeable opportunities - 2/2

March 14,2022
Global markets
The global bromine industry is an oligopoly of sorts, with four producers (Albemarle, LANXESS, Jordan Bromine, and ICL) accounting for 85% of total global capacity. There has also been considerable consolidation of bromine producers in China, and today they account for about 15% of operating capacity in the world. The industry there is fragmented, but concentrated mainly in the Bohai Bay, and more than 80% of total output comes from Shandong province.
The major global producers are highly integrated, producing a variety of brominated end-use chemicals and intermediates, primarily from bromine or from HBr. Nearly 70% of the bromine produced is captively consumed to make derivatives, and this is possible a strategy Archean is expected to follow, though this is now not the case.


Indian market scenario
There are a handful of bromine producers in India - with varying scales - all exploiting the sea bitterns available in the Kutch area. Total capacity currently stands at about 60-ktpa, while production is about 46-kt. About 14-kt is captively consumed by the producers for derivatives, and the balance is sold in the merchant market. Imports and exports more or less balance each other, but there is a lot of 'contained bromine' that comes into the country as imports of brominated compounds. For elemental bromine producers, investing in these speciality and performance products makes eminent sense.
While global demand for elemental bromine is forecast to grow at 2-3% annually, in India the growth can be at least twice as fast, albeit from a small base, but like for most chemicals, this too will remain a highly competitive space!