UV Development factors and competitive landscape of photocuring new materials industry
1, photocuring industry profile
UV Photocuring technology is an efficient, environmentally friendly, energy-saving and high-quality material surface treatment technology. It quickly cures and colors at a speed of more than thousands of times of traditional coatings or ink , and forms a high-intensity protective film. UV photocuring products are mainly found in the form of UV curing coatings, UV curing inks, UV curing adhesives, photosensitive printing plates, photoresist, photo rapid molding materials, etc., and are currently rapidly popularizing in furniture coloring, anti-corrosion and rapid repair of automotive parts.
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Related report: Beijing Puhua Youce Information Consulting Co., Ltd. "2018-2025 China UV Photocuring New Materials Operational Situation Analysis and Investment Feasibility Research Report"
UV Photocuring products' most prominent advantage is rapid curing, especially when compared with traditional thermal curing processes. UV photocuring processes are also more in line with the latest environmental requirements, so demand has grown rapidly over the past few years. Another important reason that drives the growth of the UV photocuring product market is the growth in infrastructure construction demand in major developing countries and regions around the world.
2, Relevance between the optical curing industry and the upstream and downstream industries
UV The optical curing new materials industry chain can be simply divided into upstream basic chemical raw materials and related auxiliary materials. The midstream is a manufacturer of radiation curing raw materials and radiation curing formula products, and the downstream is an end customer of ink printing, home building materials, home appliances, automobiles, electronic components, optical components, optical fiber and microelectronics industries. As a part of the photocuring formula products, UV photocuring new materials are located in the middle and upper reaches of the industrial chain.
UV The main raw materials required for the photocuring new materials industry are chemical products, including acrylic , propylene oxide , epoxy resin , trimethylolpropane, etc. Therefore, its upstream industry is the chemical industry. The prices of products in the chemical industry will be mainly affected by factors such as fluctuations in oil prices and market supply and demand. The downstream industry of the UV photocuring new materials industry is the UV photocuring formula product market, including three major industries: UV photocuring coatings, UV photocuring inks and UV photocuring adhesives. The products have a wide range of applications in the downstream, and are closely related to almost the main areas of daily life, from electronic products, home decoration and building materials to pharmaceutical and medical care. Therefore, the continuous growth of downstream industries and technological progress have a great impact on UV photocuring new material companies. Changes in product prices and changes in market demand in the downstream companies will in turn affect the profitability of UV photocuring new material companies. At the same time, since the performance of UV photocuring new material products has a significant impact on downstream product performance, the technological transformation and technological upgrades in downstream industries have also had a great impact on UV photocuring new material companies.
3. Industry entrant development obstacles and industry development factors
(1) Technical factors
UV photocuring new materials production process is relatively complex. In addition to the manufacturer's own patented technology, rich production experience is also required to produce high-quality products. Due to the instability of the raw material acrylic, the process control process is required to be very fine, and many detailed process parameters require long-term accumulation of experience. In addition, since many new UV photocuring materials are formulated products and require a variety of different performances to be formulated, customers hope that suppliers of new UV photocuring materials can meet their diverse needs and achieve one-stop procurement. This requires companies in the industry to have the ability to continuously develop new products according to market needs and make them produce at scale. This sets high barriers to the technical level and product R&D capabilities of new entrants.
(2) Talent Factors
In addition to relying on technology and process flow, the production of fine chemical industry requires high production experience for front-line workers and technicians. If a fine chemical company wants to produce high-quality products, it depends on advanced equipment, excellent production processes and reasonable configuration of experienced operators.New UV photocuring materials have many production equipment, complex process links, and strict settings and control of the reaction ingredients, reaction temperature, reaction time and other parameters. These depend on the experience accumulated by the company in years of production practice. Therefore, because new entrants lack technicians and production personnel with rich production experience, it is difficult to form market competitiveness through simple capital investment and equipment investment.
(3) Market factors
Because downstream customers have high requirements for the quality and stability of fine chemical products, according to the current practice of chemical raw material buyers, customers need to conduct a series of tests and trials before using the company's products. After acknowledging the quality of the company's products, suppliers will generally not be easily replaced, especially large buyers and foreign companies, the requirements will be stricter. Therefore, it is often difficult or takes a long time for new entrants to gain customer trust and orders.
In addition, since downstream customers have certain geographical characteristics and are distributed relatively scattered, the company needs to establish a marketing network spread all over the country. At the same time, we also need to have sales channels facing the international market and obtain information on changes in international market demand in a timely manner so that the company can develop new varieties as soon as possible. New entrants are not familiar with the global and domestic markets and it is difficult to quickly establish a complete sales network. If the company does not have a good marketing network and does not establish a product brand in the market, then there will be great difficulties in entering the fine chemical industry. Therefore, new entrants will face higher barriers to market entry.
(4) Price factors
The raw materials required for producing UV photocuring products are mainly acrylic acid, trimethylolpropane, epoxy resin, propylene oxide and other chemical products. Their prices are directly or indirectly related to the price of crude oil, and are also affected by changes in market supply and demand. In recent years, the price of crude oil and chemical products in the international market has fluctuated frequently, and enterprises need to promptly track and deal with the impact of price fluctuations on the production cost and sales market of UV light-cured products. If the price of chemicals fluctuates too much in the short term, it will have a certain impact on the profit level of the UV photocuring new materials industry.
4. Industry competitive landscape
From the perspective of the global optical curing industry competition landscape, China has strong fine chemical production capacity and cost advantages, so it has developed rapidly in the production of new UV optical curing materials. At present, basically the main production capacity of conventional UV light curing materials is concentrated in China, but due to the small brand influence of domestic companies, they basically appear in the form of private label in the global market. In the research and development of new varieties, foreign UV photocuring material companies still have great technical advantages. In recent years, domestic companies have begun to continuously try to develop some new UV photocuring materials, but because they have a gap with foreign companies in terms of company size and economic strength, they have weak competitiveness in special varieties.
Although foreign companies have strong technical strength, product innovation R&D and application R&D capabilities, due to the joint influence of factors such as China becoming the terminal application market for UV optical curing materials, the long-term sluggish foreign real economy and the rapid improvement of China's production technology level, the production capacity of UV optical curing materials has not been effectively expanded.
Currently, global radiation cured materials suppliers are mainly divided into two categories. One is a large comprehensive chemical enterprise, whose business scope involves multiple types of chemical products. UV photocured materials are only an integral part of their business. Representative companies include BASF , Arkema Group, Changxing Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Changxing Chemical"), Jiangsu Sanmu Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jiangsu Sanmu"), etc. The other category is professional UV photocuring material manufacturers, among which larger companies include global companies such as IGM, as well as domestic Tianjin Jiuri New Materials Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jiri New Materials"), Jiangsu Kaiphosphorus Ruiyang Chemical Co., Ltd., Jiangsu Litian Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Litian Technology"), etc.
