Overcapacity wire and cable manufacturing industry is facing challenges (2)

Never blindly invest

"Avoiding duplicate investment and overcapacity is a problem that must be faced by the cable manufacturing industry." Chen Kun believes that at present, many cable companies must enter the field of new energy cables. Some of these companies not only have a good technical foundation, but also have abundant capital, and other companies are difficult to compete with them. “Although the transfer of corporate development and R&D direction should be determined by the market, companies must make careful decisions, not Only blindly invest in the immediate interests and do not blindly expand production capacity and strategic shifts.If too many companies participate in a certain field, they will trigger a vicious price war, which can easily lead to lower costs for profit, and the quality of products cannot be guaranteed. It is also not conducive to the healthy and orderly development of the entire industry."

Take the new energy cables that have attracted much attention in recent years as an example. At present, there are nearly 20 companies that can produce nuclear power cables in China, of which 6 to 7 are producing K1 products and nearly 10 are producing K3 products. As a clean energy source, wind energy is inexhaustible and has the most development value. From a global point of view, the wind energy industry will maintain an annual growth rate of 20%, which means a huge market space for China's cable manufacturing industry. However, the environment of wind power generation is poor, the service life of fans is long, and the cables need to rotate with the fans. The technical requirements for the cables are very high. They must be resistant to twisting, cold, salt spray, oil, ultraviolet and soft. Although the domestic R&D of wind power cables is still in its infancy, there are 6 to 7 companies that can produce wind power special cables. These companies have abundant capital and technology. It is difficult for other companies to squeeze into the cable market for wind power.

“The investment that is suitable for oneself and can lay a long-term foundation for the company and enhance its current efficiency is the best.” According to Jiang Huajun, after several years of development, the Far East Group’s wind power cable production scale has reached RMB 2 billion, and the nuclear power cable The scale of production reached 3 billion yuan. In addition, Far East Cable uses 3% of its sales revenue each year as R&D input for new energy cables to further expand and capture the market.

Focus on the main business

In recent years, due to the difficult survival of cable companies, many enterprises have switched to production and diversified operations, among which there are many well-known large companies. The proportion of diversified industries is gradually increasing, and the main industry is not prominent, resulting in the competitiveness of Chinese cable companies. Constantly lower.

“Only by concentrating resources and specializing in the main business can we make the cable industry bigger, stronger, and better.” Xiaoyan Cao said that only focusing on the cable industry for a long period of time will be conducive to the cultivation of professional talents and the accumulation of technology. Many areas of the cable manufacturing industry are high-tech intensive industries. Without a strong professional and scientific team, it is impossible to carry out technological innovation and scientific research and development.

The facts show that nothing can be done as a result. In the next few years, the national cable manufacturing industry will continue to experience a difficult stage. There must be a number of backbones, always focusing on the development of the cable industry, and supporting the banner of China's national cable industry. The development of specialization can be extended along the upstream and downstream of the product and industrial chain. The development space is actually huge.

Pay attention to standard setting

When many Chinese companies opened up overseas markets, we found that in addition to a series of trade protection barriers, foreign countries often set technical barriers through the formulation of technical standards. Technical barriers also allow Chinese companies to pay enough production costs and marketing costs. For example, to enter the US market to pass UL certification, to meet European standards in Europe; some European industries even have to revise a standard every two years, the purpose is very clear, that is, allow you to turn around their standards. China's standards are far behind the changes in emerging markets. Leading products such as wind power, nuclear power, optoelectronics, and smart grid have no prior intervention in the national standard.

Experts believe that for China's cable economy to integrate into the global market, it needs more standard sense of competition and sense of responsibility of the nation. "Chinese companies must also learn to use the technology strategy of competing with rivals." Yang Qidong, chairman of Fujian Qidong Wire and Cable Co., Ltd. believes that if China's international bidding for large projects, also set national standards, the future market competition will be Obviously reflected.

Improve patent conversion rate

Patent and innovation are the concrete manifestations of the company's core competitiveness. Domestic cable companies do not have enough patent awareness, and have a significant shortage of patent quality and quantity compared with foreign companies. The conversion rate of patent results is very low. According to investigations by relevant agencies, at present domestic cable companies have relatively few invention patents with high gold content and more utility model patents; while patents applied by multinational corporations are mostly invention patents, and thus the gap between domestic enterprises and multinational corporations can be seen. Statistics show that if calculated according to per capita, the number of patents in China is 14:100 compared with developed countries.

Experts suggest that domestic companies should combine the current status of cable products, broaden the horizon of science and technology, pay attention to the source of innovation of the world cable technology, integrate resources, and promote technological innovation, so as to have more autonomous technological patents. At the same time improve the conversion rate of patent results.

Pay attention to personnel training

"For cable companies, talent is of utmost importance." At present, there is a shortage of skilled and comprehensive talents in the cable manufacturing industry, and the brain drain has seriously affected the development of the industry.

The reason is that companies rarely pay attention to the training of talents. For college graduates who have just graduated, the space for improving their business capabilities is not placed in important positions as a training target. It is difficult for them to quickly grow into the backbone; in the course of business operations, scientific research and production are often disconnected from each other. It is because the interest orientations of scientific research and production departments are often inconsistent; excessive intervention by administrative leaders has weakened the enthusiasm of engineers for technological innovation; the company's treatment is low, the working environment cannot mobilize enthusiasm, and talents cannot be retained; the cable manufacturing industry is similar There are many situations like this. There are often faults in technical personnel. In particular, academic leaders with higher levels of technological R&D, fewer scientific research and management talents with both scientific research and development capabilities and strong organizational coordination capabilities.

Experts of industry associations believe that cable companies must strengthen the construction of a talented team. We must pay attention to the establishment of a combination of production, education and research, and form scientific and technological resources sharing mechanisms with scientific research institutions. This is a shortcut for companies to build core R&D teams and train their own talented teams as quickly as possible.

Promote green environmental protection

Although the cable manufacturing industry is only a supporting industry, it occupies a quarter of the output value of the Chinese electrical industry. It has a wide range of products and a wide range of applications. It is a basic equipment that can transmit electrical energy, transmit information, manufacture various electrical instrumentation and instruments, and realize indispensable electromagnetic energy conversion. It is a necessary basic product for the future electrification and information society. It is worthwhile to promote green regardless of its use and production when it advocates green environmental protection.

The state has promulgated many relevant laws and regulations for this purpose. For example, it is forbidden to use polyvinyl chloride wires and cables in important buildings. Halogen-free and low-smoke cross-linked polyolefin insulated wires and cables must be used to avoid heavy smoke and chlorine at the time of fire, causing casualties.

It is understood that the cable manufacturing industry in the world produces 5 million tons of waste each year in the production process. Also, 10% of long-term stored cable products become waste, which not only pollutes the environment but also wastes natural resources. At present, among the cable materials, the reutilization rate of copper and aluminum is more than 95%, while the reuse rate of polyvinyl chloride and polyethylene is only 3%. Although the low-smoke and halogen-free environment-friendly cables have been widely used in China in the past two years, there are still a long way to go.

Exploring Aluminum on Copper

Because copper has better electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity than aluminum, and less loss of electrical energy when delivering current, it has been recognized as the preferred material for wire and cable. However, our country is rich in aluminum and copper resources are scarce, in recent years, copper prices rose too fast, the feasibility of aluminum substitute copper has become a hot spot in the industry, it has repeatedly led to different views of the controversy.

The small and medium-sized motor industry associations opposed the use of aluminum as the enameled wire and believed that the use of aluminum instead of copper in small and medium-sized motors is not feasible. It is a technical retrogression that violates the national industrial policy. Some people in the wire and cable manufacturing industry are screaming that the price of copper is ridiculously high and they are using energy-saving as an excuse to resist the use of aluminum-core cables. In fact, replacing copper with aluminum is an established technology policy in China. In the cable standards, copper and aluminum are clearly defined as power cable conductors. However, the promotion of aluminum-to-copper conductors for power cable conductors is actually very slow.

“This is a big misunderstanding. There are many links that need energy saving and energy saving, and reducing line losses is not just a conductor issue. There are other reasons for transmission and distribution equipment and equipment.” Beijing Beiyi Electromechanical Technology Development Center Manager Zhang Guanglie told the reporter, “From the point of view of international development, Europe, the United States, and Japan are promoting the use of aluminum-core power cables, and many of the cable engineering tenders for developing countries that have been seen have been proposed using aluminum-core power cables.”

In the interview, the reporter learned that under the current situation of high copper prices and the unbearable situation of cable companies, the promotion of copper-clad aluminum conductors has begun to break. Experts predict that copper-clad aluminum conductor cables will be rapidly promoted. The two new products of the Xingle Group’s "Copper Clad Aluminum (CCA) and Copper Composite Conductor Wire and Cable" passed the appraisal and signing contracts of tens of millions of yuan is a good example.

The chairman of the group, Ruan Yijie, told the reporter: “The price of copper has gone so far that it has far surpassed the ability of the enterprise to bear. We developed copper-clad aluminum a few years ago, hoping not to reduce the performance of the cable. Under the premise of finding a way out of the bottleneck of raw materials for cable cracking, copper clad aluminum technology is feasible.” The results of the appraisal show that the cost of this product is reduced by 20% to 40% compared with similar copper conductor products. And the proportion of small, easy processing, easy installation, transmission performance.

Although some cable manufacturers have different levels of response, it seems that they have seen the light.