Competition situation, development opportunity, development trend and market scale development prospect of welding materials industry

The common problem of the domestic flux industry for many years is that the core production process is backward, that is, the technology of the main equipment smelting furnace originated from the Soviet Union. After being introduced into China, it has not achieved a real technological breakthrough for decades, resulting in low per capita flux output and difficult to ensure product stability. Due to the high technical threshold and equipment requirements for the recycling of welding solid waste, it is not widely used in the industry at present, mainly because the users of terminal welding materials often use multiple types of welding materials at the same time, and usually stack the solid waste generated by multiple welding materials together, and the chemical composition of different welding materials is very different, resulting in a large difference in the chemical composition of different welding solid waste, Therefore, enterprises are required to master a series of core processes such as pretreatment, batching, charging and smelting of welding solid waste. Few enterprises in the industry have mastered and applied the technology of replacing main materials with welding solid waste, and the proportion of welding solid waste investment in raw materials is generally low.

1. Industry competition pattern

The major foreign enterprises in the welding material industry include Lincoln of the United States, Issa of Sweden, Boletisen of Germany and other companies, while the major domestic enterprises include Atlantic, Harbin Welding Huatong, Tianjin Bridge, Tianjin Jinqiao, Shandong Solitech, etc. Foreign companies take advantage of their technological and capital advantages to occupy the main market of high-end welding materials for a long time. With the development of China's high-end equipment manufacturing industry and new energy industry, the domestic demand for high-end welding material products has increased year by year. The leading welding material enterprises, represented by Atlantic and Harbin Welding Huatong, are also increasing their research and development of high-end welding materials to try to change the situation that China's high-performance welding material products rely heavily on imports. However, the product structure of the above companies is still dominated by welding wires and welding rods, and in the field of high-end welding flux products, The market capacity is huge, but there are no large-scale listed companies at present.

At present, the origin of welding flux in China is mainly concentrated in Hunan and Henan. Because Yongzhou area in Hunan is rich in manganese ore resources, manganese ore is one of the main raw materials of welding flux, so the welding flux manufacturers in Hunan are mainly distributed in Yongzhou area. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 200 welding material manufacturers in Yongzhou area alone, while the vast majority of them still rely on manual production, and the products are mainly general welding flux.

2. Industry development opportunities

The State Council, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other national ministries and commissions have successively issued a number of policy documents such as "Made in China 2025" and "Guiding Catalogue for Industrial Restructuring (2019 edition)", which support high-efficient welding materials, lightweight material applications, special welding materials, etc. as national encouragement, key support and strategic emerging industries, At the same time, the state has issued industrial support and other relevant policies for the downstream application fields of welding materials, such as high-end manufacturing, material application, etc., providing a broad space for the market demand of welding materials products. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China's output of steel and welding materials has always ranked first in the world. According to the statistics of the World Iron and Steel Association, China's crude steel output in 2020 is 1.053 billion tons, accounting for 56.07% of the world's total output. The steel consumption of welded structures is an important indicator to measure the overall level of welding technology. About 300 million tons of steel are involved in welding processing in China every year, accounting for more than 50% of the global welding processing. China's consumption of welding consumables accounts for more than 50% of the global consumption, and it has become a major country in the production and consumption of welding consumables in the world.

There are many domestic welding material enterprises, with the annual total output of more than 4 million tons, accounting for more than 1/2 of the world's total output. Although China has become a major producer of welding materials, there is still a certain gap between China and developed countries. Although China's welding materials industry has undergone earth-shaking changes in the past decade, it should also be noted that China is not a strong country in welding materials, and there are gaps in product structure, variety, quality and brand, especially in the field of high-end welding materials production. The root cause of this phenomenon is that the domestic welding material manufacturers started late and their R&D capabilities are relatively weak. In addition, the number of listed welding material companies in China is small. There is no stable financing channel for many other welding material enterprises to ensure sufficient R&D investment.

With the rapid development of rail transit, automobile, aerospace and other industries, China's industrialization process continues to accelerate, the degree of scale continues to improve, as well as the technical content of materials, energy consumption level, power consumption level, functional integrity and safety requirements continue to improve, the variety and application range of welding materials products continue to enrich and expand, and the market demand for high-performance welding materials products will increase day by day.

3. Industry development trend

As China's economy enters the stage of transformation, upgrading, improving quality and efficiency, China's development is at an important stage of industrialization and modernization. In particular, aerospace equipment, advanced rail transit, high-grade CNC machine tools and robots, marine engineering equipment, high-tech ships, new materials, etc., which are the ten key areas of the "Made in China 2025" released by the state, are closely related to the development of welding technology, It will promote the continuous improvement and optimization of the variety and structure of welding materials.

For a long time, there have been problems in China's welding materials industry, such as poor product batch stability, low proportion of welding materials suitable for automation and high efficiency, insufficient independent supporting capacity of high performance, and low emphasis on research and development and preparation of green welding materials. The welding material industry in the future has the following development trends.