The new materials industry covers a wide range of industries, including rare earth, magnetic materials, diamond materials, new energy materials, special ceramic materials, optoelectronics, information materials, smart materials, and biomedical materials. Except for a few of these industries that have a monopoly of resources. Most are competitive industries. Although the competition is fierce, due to the high technological content of these industries, the added value of products is large. Therefore, the profitability of most companies is relatively high.
Development Trend of China's New Materials Industry
China has become a big country in the production and consumption of new materials. The output of basic materials such as iron and steel, important non-ferrous metals, major building materials, and synthetic fibers ranks first in the world. The industrial added value of all industrial materials is approximately 1,496.4 billion yuan, accounting for approximately 14.6% of China's GDP. Wang Qi'an, director of the Materials Division of the Department of High-tech Development and Industrialization of the Ministry of Science and Technology, pointed out that China's new materials industry still has many problems, such as large resources and energy consumption in the production process, high-performance materials and their development, and advanced preparation and processing In terms of material performance characterization and application, there is a large gap from the world advanced level, and there are fewer varieties with independent intellectual property rights. Most of the key materials with high technological content and high added value rely on imports. Therefore, the development of China's new materials industry urgently needs to be accelerated.
1. The modernization of the defense military will greatly stimulate the demand for new materials
Due to the excellent performance and high price of new materials, it was mainly used in military, aerospace, aviation and other fields in the past. With the requirements of China's national defense modernization, the absolute value of national military expenditures has continued to increase, and its proportion in GDP has also increased. We expect that in this context, new materials will usher in better development opportunities.
2. Domestic consumption growth stimulates the development of new chemical materials
With the technological breakthrough of new chemical materials, large-scale production has led to a significant cost reduction, and the price has been accepted by civilian products. In addition, new chemical materials have high temperature, low temperature, corrosion resistance, aging resistance, high strength, and friction resistance. And other excellent performance, has been widely used in electronics, automotive, building materials and other fields. The rapid development of China's economy has driven demand for consumer electronics such as electronics and automobiles. The growth in demand for these downstream consumer goods has also driven the development of China's new materials industry. At present, the demand for some new materials has increased several times the growth of China's GDP.
3． Domestic leading enterprises' independent innovation capabilities have been improved, and the import substitution trend is obvious
Inevitably during the development of the new materials industry, product market prices fluctuate greatly. Generally speaking, domestic new chemical products have undergone a process of foreign technology blockade, market monopoly, high product prices and high gross margins, independent research and development, device construction, foreign countries, dumping state protection, anti-dumping, cooperation, market stability, and reasonable prices. After several years of development, China's new materials industry has begun to take shape and has strong international competitiveness in a few areas. Through continuous R & D and innovation, domestic leading enterprises have formed processes and technologies with independent intellectual property rights, which gradually have cost and scale advantages, and the trend of import substitution is obvious.
Typical examples are silicone products. Before China failed to build the first set of industrialized equipment, foreign rivals adopted blockade technology and high-price strategies. When the price of silicone intermediate products was the highest in 1996, it exceeded 40,000 yuan / ton. After the domestic installation was completed, foreign competitors adopted a dumping strategy, and the price was less than 15 thousand yuan / ton at the lowest in 2003. With the support of relevant state departments, through anti-dumping investigations and arbitration, the current price is maintained at a reasonable price of 27 thousand yuan / ton. It is precisely because of the buffer of policy protection and the continuous absorption and digestion of domestic enterprises and independent innovation that China's organic silicon industry has developed rapidly and is close to the world advanced level. Also. Various high-performance reinforcement materials researched and developed in China are gradually replacing imported products, and a number of characteristic high-performance resins have been successfully developed. A new generation of resin-based, metal-based and ceramic-based composites is under research and development; in the search for new high-critical temperature superconducting materials, the high-temperature superconducting mechanism, the correlation and crystal structure of copper oxide superconducting materials, superconducting copper The field of oxide material practical material technology, thin film technology-related material science integration research, high critical temperature superconductivity research and other fields have always maintained or approached the world's leading edge.
China has successfully built an amorphous thin strip coil with an annual output of 100 tons; developed a multi-component alloy and a multi-purpose new material; capable of drawing a large diameter of 300 mm (12 inches) in diameter and a weight of 81 kg Silicon single crystal. A breakthrough has been made in the research of porcelain. The development and application of high-temperature structural ceramic materials have a certain international status. Low-fire ceramics have formed their own characteristics. The industrialization of polymer materials has also made great progress in recent years; the use of rare earth resources and research and development of new hydrogen storage materials have been successfully applied to the manufacture of nickel-hydrogen batteries under laboratory conditions.
Enterprise characteristics and investment opportunities in the new materials industry
(I) Overall characteristics of enterprises in the new materials industry
In general, the asset quality of China's new materials companies is relatively good. The overall profitability of the industry is strong. From the perspective of market structure, the new material industry chain is increasingly perfect, the industrial cluster effect is obvious, the market demand is strong, and the company's supply capacity is enhanced. From the perspective of corporate behavior, new material companies have frequent mergers and acquisitions and reorganizations, repeated breakthroughs in technology, diversified competition methods, and sales Channels were further expanded. Among many new material companies, although there are problems of various industries themselves, there are also some common problems, mainly reflected in:
1. High external dependence
After several years of development, China's new chemical industry has begun to take shape. And it has strong international competitiveness in a few areas. However, compared with advanced countries, we still have shortcomings such as insufficient production capacity, poor product quality, few product specifications, and failure to achieve serialization. Therefore, many important products and high-performance products still need to rely on imports. Generally speaking, the greater the technical difficulty and the larger the capacity gap, the greater the dependence on foreign countries, such as the silicone industry and the carbon fiber industry.
2. High technical barriers
The technical barriers to new chemical materials are generally high. At present, China still relies mainly on importing related products or digesting, absorbing, and innovating imported technologies. For example, the MDI industry has a clear "oligopoly" nature. At present, there are only a few companies in the world that truly master the core technology of MDI, all of which are internationally renowned chemical companies such as BASF and Bayer.
3． Small business scale
The average main business income of several major new materials companies is about 555 million yuan. The average net profit is approximately 64.6 million yuan. Compared with enterprises in other industries, the average operating scale of new material companies is still relatively small, and companies need to continue to expand in order to achieve economies of scale and enhance competitiveness. At present, small and medium-sized enterprises producing low-end products account for the majority of domestic new material companies, and few leading enterprises can participate in international competition.
4． There is a certain degree of vicious competition
Due to the existence of many small and mixed enterprises, China's new material products not only have low profits, but also have to withstand uncontrolled mutual price reduction and vicious competition among domestic enterprises. It is also a kind of material. Many companies have been established overnight, and each manufacturer has mastered a certain technology or purchased a certain result. Enterprises are in the growth stage, repeating at one level. The slow development has not promoted and complemented each other, disorderly competition, competitive price reduction, and mutual killing, resulting in a great waste of resources.
(II) Investment opportunities in the new materials industry and enterprises
1. Vigorous promotion of national policies
In order to develop the new materials industry, the state has given strong support in policy. Up to now, the state has strongly supported the development of the new materials industry through seven projects, including the High-tech Industrialization New Materials Special Project, the National Science and Technology Research Plan, the Torch Plan, the 863 Plan, the 973 Plan, the National Natural Science Fund, and the SME Innovation Fund. At the same time, the state has also increased funding for scientific and technological research in the new materials industry, with an annual investment of more than 500 million yuan. Zhang Guobao, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that it is necessary to strengthen macro guidance, strengthen policy support, and recognize, focus on, and give priority to the development of new materials industries from the perspective of development strategies. Zhang Guobao emphasized that although China's new materials industry has made great progress, compared with developed countries, the overall level of new materials still has a large gap. The country's macro guidance and policy orientation will play an important guiding role in the research and development, industrialization and large-scale production of new materials. It is necessary to establish a policy that closely integrates market and demand for innovation and industrialization mechanisms, strengthens the innovation ability within the industrialization of new materials, encourages the use of social resources to carry out innovation activities, optimizes the allocation of resources, and breaks through technical bottlenecks in the engineering and industrialization of new materials , Establish the development goals of materials science, attach importance to the core industrialization and the formation of the industrial chain, achieve relevant industries supporting upstream, middle and downstream, and realize industrialization on a large scale. All these measures have had a significant impact on promoting and accelerating the development of China's new materials industry. China's new materials industry has also entered a period of rapid development.
2. Downstream demand highlights investment value
From the perspective of industry development, China's chemical new materials industry is generally on an upward path. On the one hand, due to the high technical barriers of new chemical materials and the strong bargaining power of the industry, it is still in the rising stage of the rapid development of the industry. It is also an object of national policy to encourage and support development. The development momentum is generally good. Due to the deep processing of products in this sub-industry, the proportion of raw materials in the cost of fine chemical products is relatively small, so the profit is relatively less affected by fluctuations in raw material prices. Factors such as process levels and marketing strategies are more important. The core competitiveness of enterprises is often Reflected in research and development strength, management level and development strategy. On the other hand, the downstream industries of the new materials industry are mainly automobiles, aviation equipment, communication equipment, home appliances, IT industries, and other electronic information industries, and the above industries are currently in a period of rapid development, which will inevitably increase the demand for new materials. It provides a market basis for the rapid development of the new materials industry.
3． The emergence of revolutionary new materials changes the path of industrial development
Generally speaking, after revolutionary new materials are developed and commercialized, they often bring about sudden changes in related industries. For example, with the commercialization of domestic SiC wafers, the problem of basic raw materials that troubled the development of third-generation semiconductors in China has been resolved. The production costs of high-quality LEDs and semiconductor devices will be significantly reduced. A fundamental reversal has been achieved, and related industry groups will flourish. Therefore, the localization process of the C chip will change the development path of the semiconductor industry.
(III) Investment risks of new materials companies
New materials have gradually become a hot spot in the market, but the existence of policies and markets does not mean that the company will definitely be able to obtain high profits. Current companies investing in new materials need to pay attention to the following issues:
The first is the supply of raw materials. Most of the new materials are raw materials. Because the raw materials are far from the finished products, the price negotiation ability is relatively weak, especially for enterprises lacking technological and resource advantages. Profits and sustainable development capabilities are greatly restricted. If the supply of raw materials cannot be solved well, the product will become water without a source and no wood. Take the optical fiber preform as an example, the quality of domestic optical fiber reaches the international first-class level, but the core material for manufacturing optical fiber is 80% -90% of imported optical fiber, which affects the profitability of the product to a certain extent. Therefore, in the investment of new materials projects, the implementation of raw materials must be considered first.
The second is the backward technology and equipment of enterprises. The overall technical level of China's new materials industry is not high, there are too many primary products, the quality of intermediate products is unstable, and the lack of advanced products is far from meeting the needs of economic development. Except for some key enterprises whose technical equipment is close to or reaches the international advanced level, most of the small and medium-sized enterprises are lagging behind in technical equipment, which leads to weak international competitiveness and restricted sustainable development.
Third, there is a disconnect between domestic production, education, and research. There are many difficulties in the industrialization of many achievements, and the technology update rate of enterprises is slow. For example, the scientific research of China's nanomaterials is not backward in the world, but there are many obstacles in industrialization. Most of the products that are actually formed are primary products, and the profit is not much.
The fourth is low entry barriers. Take the third-generation rare earth permanent magnet material NdFeB as an example. Although the material is listed as the highest grade in the China High-Tech Product Catalog 2000), the barriers to entry are not high. The previous set of equipment with an annual output of 500 tons Only need to invest about 60 million yuan. In addition, the technical requirements of low- and mid-range products are not high, and the relevant international patents will expire in 2003, which means that many companies can quickly enter the international market. The above reasons have caused many domestic enterprises to invest in this project in recent years, increasing market competition and rapidly diminishing product profit margins. Therefore, it is impossible for a project with a relatively low threshold to maintain excess profits for a long period of time, and care must be taken when investing.
Fifth, the speed of technological upgrading is fast. Any new material is a new material for a certain period of time. With its life cycle, it cannot be a new material forever. It is also an inevitable trend for a new material to be replaced by newer materials in the future.