After the two sessions, deepening industrial reform and promoting the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry have become hot topics. But how to achieve "upgrading"? Taking the path of intelligent development, machine automated production is a good way.
Today, labor costs have become the largest cost expenditure in the manufacturing industry, and correspondingly, it is still difficult to recruit ordinary workers with a monthly salary of 3,000. In this case, if automation can allow a lighting company with only more than 1,000 workers to achieve a production capacity equivalent to a company with 3,000 employees, it is estimated that the company will choose such a set of equipment. This is the convenience brought by smart manufacturing.
As an important part of the LED packaging process, the packaging equipment market segment has always been subject to the overall fluctuations in the packaging field. Currently, China's LED packaging market is divided into three camps, namely the international manufacturer camp, the Taiwanese manufacturer camp and the mainland manufacturer camp. Chinese equipment manufacturers need to compete with major international manufacturers to share these three parts of the market.
According to LEDinside research, China's LED packaging market grew by 20% year-on-year in 2013, which was lower than market expectations. This was mainly due to the continued decline in prices. By 2014, thanks to the recovery in market demand, many packaging manufacturers have received full orders. However, due to the continuous decline in prices, it is common to increase revenue without increasing profits. And what is the current status of LED equipment?
Domestic packaging equipment manufacturers are entering a mature stage as a whole, and the profits of their products have become very transparent. In the face of fierce competition, conventional models can only cut prices. Judging from the current market, domestic die-bonding machines, dispensing machines and optical tape loading machines have basically replaced international imports, but wire bonding machines still need to work hard.
Ruthless competition has resulted in low gross profit margins for packaging equipment, while the technical threshold requirements for equipment research and development are high, making it difficult for companies to survive, not to mention spending more energy and expense on mid- to long-term development. He Yunbo, general manager of Han's Optoelectronics, said frankly that the installment payment method has caused serious cash flow problems for domestic companies. Under such circumstances, the intensified competition in the industry has made life difficult for domestic and international peers, and they are all struggling for survival and development.
Integration and reshuffle coexist
In March 2014, Zhongwei and Hongli reached a strategic cooperation, opening up a new upstream and downstream resource integration pattern and development model in the LED industry. This also means to a certain extent that LED packaging equipment and packaging manufacturers have gradually strengthened vertical integration to resist increasingly fierce market competition.
For a long time, disorderly competition in the LED market has been serious, and corporate competition has been fierce. Many companies with an output value of over 100 million or slightly famous companies have gone out of business. In order to survive, many small and medium-sized enterprises have been trapped in price wars and were unable to extricate themselves.
Liu Shen, manager of the sales and service department of Zhongwei Optoelectronics, once told a reporter from China LED Network that the growth of the LED industry has had its ups and downs, but the overall trend is good. At present, resources are increasingly concentrated in large enterprises, and large-scale manufacturing of LED lighting has become a trend. The LED industry will eventually go through a process of ups and downs like traditional industries. For example, there were more than 300 TV companies in China back then, and only a few leading companies were left.
Having the same view, He Yunbo lamented to reporters: "Currently, domestic packaging equipment companies are not large. This situation makes it difficult for these companies to support themselves independently. They are beaten everywhere in the competition with large international packaging equipment companies. This industry urgently needs large companies or large consortiums to strategically inject funds to relieve difficulties. Otherwise, equipment companies are easy to be integrated or disappear like Youguang (Advanced Optoelectronics), Lianshuo and other companies."
It is true that LED packaging equipment manufacturers face fierce competition from their peers, but the broad market prospects and development potential also bring development opportunities to manufacturers.
ANNA