Key Materials and Processing Equipment Rely on Import?-2

According to the statistics of China Tungsten Industry Association, China's tungsten resources account for 70% of the world's total. In 2017, the production took up 84% of the world's total. The capacity of the listed company's Xiamen Tungsten located in Xiamen, Fujian Province, takes up about 20% of the whole world’s capacity. 

China's tungsten products are basically mineral products, tungsten chemical raw materials, traditional lighting, conventional cutting tools and their extrudate while there are gaps in many high-tech and high-value tungsten products, such as high-end tungsten carbide products used in the information industry, aerospace industry, military industry, vehicle manufacturing industry and equipment manufacturing industry, coated blades, gradient tungsten carbide, the specialized cutting tools of special industries and their solutions. The products of high-specific gravity tungsten alloys, tungsten-copper alloys, tungsten-silver alloys in the photovoltaic industry, medical equipment and nuclear industry are mostly primary products while most of the high-end processed products are controlled by developed countries in the West. For instance, Sandvik, a leading manufacturer of tungsten carbide, had revenue of 71.6 billion RMB in 2017, with a profit of 14.2 billion RMB. In the same period, the main business revenue of China's tungsten industry was 69 billion, and the profit was about 7 billion. In the field of tungsten carbide, the revenue of main products was about 20 billion and the profit was only 1.4 billion.

There are numerous examples of western countries enterprises, such as in the manufacture of tungsten powder and tungsten carbide powder. In addition to Xiamen Jinlu which is at the forefront of the global industry, most of the markets are occupied by companies such as H.C.Starck. There are few high-tech tungsten molybdenum products are comparable to Plansee’s products in Austria. As for the cutting tool and model industries, we have thousands of tungsten carbide processing enterprises, and the total output is the highest in the world. But most of them are low-end tungsten steel products. A lot of low-price competitions occur between the domestic companies for low-end markets, such as India and the Middle East. Most enterprises cannot compete with similar enterprises in Europe, America, Japan and Korea in terms of scale and technology.

Every year, I visit domestic enterprises in the tungsten, molybdenum and rare earth industries and learn. I was not only impressed with our low-end production and processing technology, but also the lack of processing equipment, especially the testing equipment which is a far cry from high-end manufacturing companies in developed countries. On the one hand, many private enterprises have very little investment and cannot afford such equipment. On the other hand, although some large and medium-sized enterprises have the ability to invest in equipment, the operation and the maintenance of equipment are poor owing to the lack of corresponding talents.

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