Sodium carbonate, also known as soda ash or alkali ash in international trade, is an important inorganic chemical raw material, which is mainly used to produce flat glass, glass products and ceramic glaze. From the point of view of technology, soda ash and glass belong to the upstream and downstream relationship. Thanks to the recent madness of glass, soda ash is also ready to move. Investors can make price reference or pay attention to the arbitrage relationship between upstream and downstream when trading soda ash or glass.

20 19 12.6, soda ash futures were listed and traded in Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange. The listing of soda ash futures is of great significance to soda ash industry. On the one hand, it helps to improve the price discovery efficiency of soda ash industry, on the other hand, it helps enterprises to avoid business risks. After soda ash futures are listed, they can generate a continuous, open, authoritative and transparent futures price through trading, which can provide an effective reference for the agreed price in the market, help industrial chain enterprises to timely capture the factors that affect soda ash price changes, so as to predict in advance, respond in time and accurately, and promote the healthy and stable development of the industry. In addition, through the forward price guidance mechanism of soda ash futures, the industrial chain can arrange production and operation reasonably and optimize resource allocation.

Because the futures price formation mechanism can cover the macro and supply and demand information at present and in the future, the soda ash futures price can often reflect the market operation more effectively than the spot price, and it is an effective tool for the market to allocate resources. Taking flat glass production as an example, the purchase cost of heavy alkali accounts for more than 25% of the production cost of float glass, and enterprises are very sensitive to the fluctuation of soda price. However, due to the lack of efficient hedging tools, some enterprises can only be forced to avoid market risks by hoarding goods, which not only occupies a lot of money, but also has high storage costs, which is not conducive to the healthy development of the industry. After soda ash futures are listed, upstream and downstream enterprises can hedge through the futures market and use the leverage of futures trading margin to achieve hedging with less funds and stabilize corporate profits. Listed soda ash futures can further improve the futures variety system of related industrial chains and improve the breadth and depth of the futures market serving the building materials industry.