High performance fiber breaks through the bottleneck

As an important part of the new material field in one of China's seven strategic emerging industries, domestic high-performance fiber has shortened the gap with developed countries for nearly 30 years through rapid development during the “11th Five-Year Plan” period. Aramid 1313 and carbon fiber T300 have been industrialized and supplied in bulk; carbon fiber T700 industrialization production technology has also been fully opened; dry ultra-high molecular polyethylene fiber has reached the leading domestic and international advanced level. At present, China's high-performance fiber production covers almost all types of fields, and its total production capacity is second only to the United States and Japan, making it an important high-performance fiber producer in the world. However, due to the late start, weak industrial foundation, insufficient innovation capacity, and narrow downstream application scope, China's high-performance fiber still has a gap of 15 to 20 years compared with developed countries.

How to find the gap, break through the bottleneck, and seize the opportunity for the country to include high-tech materials in the seven strategic emerging industries during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period has accelerated the development and become an important issue in the high-performance fiber industry in China.

Equipment is not strong under the control of people

The basic research work of China's high-performance fibers started in the 1960s and began in mid-2000. The real industrialization development is after 2005. Therefore, high-performance fiber is still a relatively young industry in China. Although significant breakthroughs have been made in the development of high-performance fiber technology and industrialization during the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” period, the theoretical foundation and industrialization foundation of high-performance fiber and its composite materials are relatively weak compared to the relatively rapid development of national economy and national defense construction; A series of key scientific and technological issues in the fields of preparation, aramid fiber preparation, and efficient preparation and wide application of composite materials have not yet been completely broken; the industry’s ability to independently innovate is not strong; some high-performance fibers and composite parts are still dependent on imports. , in a situation subject to control. In particular, large-capacity equipment for the production of high-performance fibers is mostly imported, and only production equipment with a small-scale research output of tens of tons and hundreds of tons is developed and produced by itself.

Speaking of the equipment problem, Duan Xiaoping, president of the China Chemical Fiber Association, said that the existing major manufacturers in China are basically non-standard equipment. Each equipment varies greatly and it is difficult to organize a unified solution. Therefore, the further development of domestic high-performance fibers requires firstly the improvement of equipment manufacturing and engineering capabilities. It is necessary to break through the industrialization core equipment such as large-capacity reactors, large-scale oxidation and carbonation devices, large-width multi-axial looms, and large RTM molding equipment as soon as possible. Design and manufacture of key technologies to support the development of the high-performance fiber and composites industry.

Fiber applications need to be expanded

At present, the application of high-performance fibers in the world is becoming more and more extensive. Taking carbon fiber as an example, it has been widely used in new energy and automobile fields such as wind power generation, offshore oil exploration, large aircraft manufacturing, and hybrid vehicles. However, due to the lag in R&D, design, and manufacturing of high-performance fiber composite materials including carbon fibers in China, the scope of application is still very limited, and most of them are limited to the production of sports and leisure products such as fishing rods and golf clubs. Even the sources of carbon fiber cloth and carbon fiber pre-impregnated fabrics in these fields are monopolized by foreign resources or joint ventures. The sales channels of domestic carbon fiber manufacturers have not yet been fully opened, and therefore, it is even more difficult to guide downstream applications.

"After years of efforts, the production of domestic aramid and high-strength polyethylene has been relatively mature, but the downstream development and application is not ideal, and more than half of the products are used for export." Faced with a serious mismatch between production and application, Duan Xiaoping pointed out that in order for the high-performance technology fiber industry to develop, it is necessary to allow fiber to be fully used, so that the product level can be gradually increased, and the scale can be made bigger and bigger. As the scale goes up, the cost is reduced accordingly, and the company can only make a profit, and it can only invest again in the next round of research and development to form a sound development of the industry.

In the application of high-performance fibers, developed countries such as Europe, the United States, Japan, and China have gone earlier and farther. The carbon fiber developed by Toray of Japan has long been used on large aircrafts, polylactic acid fiber is used in automotive interior materials, and the dual structure hybrid cable composed of para-aramid fiber and steel wire developed by Teijin Corporation can effectively improve wear resistance. Sex and wear-resistance fatigue, long-term application in the mining site.

The experience of foreign companies in the field of high-performance fiber applications is indeed worthy of domestic enterprises to seriously study and learn from them. "However, the expansion of the application field is not enough to rely solely on the strength of the company itself." Nie Xudong, general manager of Jiangsu Hengshen Fiber Materials Co., Ltd. called on the state to give priority to the selection of domestic enterprises' products and implement government procurement on major equipment. Nie Xudong believes that the development of basic materials is absolutely inseparable from the government's support. The government procurement behavior, on the one hand, is to solve the problem of high-performance fiber and its products. On the other hand, it can also be used to verify whether the product meets the requirements in practical applications, and thus can be improved in improvement. In response, the China Chemical Fiber Association also stated on many occasions that in order to encourage and support the downstream application development of high-performance fibers, especially in the fields of military and aerospace, it is recommended that a defense procurement system should be established as soon as possible.

High costs weaken competitiveness

At present, one of the major factors restricting the expansion of high-performance fibers is the high cost. Therefore, all along, how to reduce the production cost of high-performance fibers is the focus of attention in the industry.

Taking carbon fiber as an example, due to the fact that the scale of China's carbon fiber production enterprises has generally not risen, the cost has been forced to increase, and the product price has almost no competitive advantage. Especially in the recent period, Japan's Toray and other large foreign companies took the lead in starting price cuts, and the price of T700 carbon fiber has dropped to 1 million yuan/ton, reaching the lowest point in history. "This price is undoubtedly a severe test for domestic carbon fiber manufacturers." Zhang Dingjin, Chairman of China Composite Materials Group Co., Ltd., said that China Fortune Eagles sold 1,000 tons of T300 carbon fiber last year, and originally planned to sell 2,000 tons this year. The result was not sold. Because of falling prices, selling 1,000 tons will result in a loss of 60 million to 70 million yuan, and 2,000 tons will have a loss of more than 100 million yuan. It's more profitable to sell.

According to the analysis of the industry, the price cuts of foreign carbon fiber giants are on the one hand the sluggish international economy and the oversupply of production capacity relative to the market, resulting in a downward price movement. On the other hand, it may also be that they are seeing more and more manufacturing companies entering the carbon fiber field and adopting an early strategy to deal with competition.

Domestic companies generally believe that because domestic production is not large enough and competitiveness is not strong enough, prices can only be limited to foreign companies. At the same time, everyone also admitted that there are obvious gaps in the stability, management level, and scale energy consumption of domestic and foreign companies, which leads us to be at a disadvantage in terms of price and cost, and the profitability is obviously insufficient. This is also because although the domestically produced T300 is already very mature and the T700 is also produced by companies, the main reason why China still needs a large amount of imported carbon fiber every year. According to customs statistics, in 2011 China imported 10,726 tons of carbon fiber.

Blind investment attracts attention

After entering the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period, high-performance fiber also ushered in the best period of development as high-tech materials were listed as seven strategic emerging industries. Many investors are optimistic about this strategically important industry and enter the market. It is understood that only the carbon fiber industry currently has more than 30 domestic production companies with a production capacity of about 8,000 tons, but the actual output is less than 3,000 tons. The huge gap between capacity and output has caused deep concern among the industry. Everyone believes that blind investments not only result in the waste of funds and resources, but also inevitably lead to irrational competition, thus causing companies to fall into a situation of loss.

Jiangsu Hengshen Fiber Material Co., Ltd. entered the carbon fiber field four years ago. Before that, they spent a total of five years doing market research and feasibility analysis. Nie Xudong, general manager of the company, said that carbon fiber and its composite materials are now on the eve of high growth, dawn is approaching. At this point, investors’ enthusiasm for promising the industry and investing in it is understandable. However, there may be some investors who are not aware of the inevitable laws of carbon fiber development. In particular, there is insufficient understanding of the feasibility of carbon fiber technology implementation and technical difficulty and complexity, which has led to the entry of some companies that do not have development strength. Not yet caught up in an embarrassing situation. He admitted that although Hengshen Fiber Materials Co., Ltd. is currently very successful in the development and production of carbon fiber, companies have also experienced technical confusion and market doubts. Therefore, he reminded those investors who are considering entering the carbon fiber industry to fully understand and understand the industry, and to be prepared to withstand failures and not be recognized by the market for the time being, so that the company can move toward a healthy development path in the future.

Zhang Dingjin, chairman of China National Composites Group Co., Ltd., suggested that companies should increase their research on high-level applications to prevent fiercer competition from conventional products and gradually improve corporate profits. He also suggested establishing a win-win mechanism for research institutes and enterprises in areas of low technology maturity, high difficulty, and large investment scale. In short, we must encourage joint development and production to avoid the lack of effective allocation and integration of resources, leading to a failure of the overall industry level.

Strong demand is worth looking forward to

It is predicted that the current global carbon fiber consumption will be about 50,000 tons, which will reach 300,000 to 370,000 tons in the next 15 to 20 years. The market growth rate of other types of high-energy fibers will also reach 20% to 30%.

In the face of a huge market, how will China's high-performance fibers gain competitive advantage and occupy more market share?

Duan Xiaoping believes that the first is to improve the level of production of various models and specifications; second is to improve the quality of the raw material-fiber-products industry chain, and to further break through key technologies for the development of new varieties, and to produce high-end products. The third is to scale up and realize industrialization of large-scale stability, with both single-line capacity expansion and total capacity increase.

Xu Jian, a researcher at the Institute of Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, analyzes that by the end of the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan”, China will form a large-scale industry with 10,000 tons of high-performance carbon fiber, 5,000 tons of aramid fiber, and 100,000 tons of ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene fiber. The economic scale is expected to reach more than 1 trillion yuan.

As the main body of the high-performance fiber industry, the domestic enterprises that produce high-performance fibers have full confidence in the future development of the industry.

"In the long run, the carbon fiber industry is an industry worthy of expectation and hopeful." Nie Xudong, general manager of Hengshen Fiber Materials Co., Ltd., said that historical experience tells us that after each round of economic crisis, there will be new industries and new economic growth points. He believes that high-performance fiber and its composite materials will usher in a huge business opportunity. The para-aramid produced by Jiangsu Zhaoda Special Fiber Co., Ltd. has been successfully applied in the docking experiment between Shenzhou 8 and Tiangong 1, and the general manager of the company, Liu Zhaofeng, stated that it is necessary to further improve the process and equipment, and to produce products that are different from DuPont and Teijin. Intellectual property para-aramid. Hu Xianqi, general manager of Zhejiang Shijin Basalt Fiber Co., Ltd., believes that the price is only about 1/8 to 1/5 of carbon fiber, foreign dependence is zero, and the world's leading basalt fiber production technology is more worth looking forward to, but also more development prospects.