Main Market of Valves in China in the Next Three Years

Column:Industry Dynamics Time:2016-05-26

Many projects such as water conservancy will explode the huge demand of valve market.

However, in the face of such a huge future market, how many orders can Chinese valve manufacturers share in the competition with foreign capital, and how big the gap between them is, these problems are probably the most concern of Chinese valve manufacturers.

1. The gap of the whole industrial chain. As a kind of mechanical equipment, valve production is in the downstream of the entire industrial chain, including steel, sealing materials, and the level of development of mechanical processing industries will have an important impact on the technical parameters of the valve. The strength, ductility and corrosion resistance of steel directly affect the high pressure and corrosion resistance of the valve; the production level of sealing materials determines the medium and pressure that the valve can withstand; and the precision of mechanical processing is an important factor affecting the sealing grade of the interface seal, the valve head and the valve seat.

2. The gap in the degree of specialization. As a general pipeline equipment, valves are widely used in many fields, including water conservancy and hydropower, urban pipeline network, petroleum and petrochemical, sewage treatment and other industries. Due to the different conditions of different industries and projects in terms of working conditions, media and seals, the technical requirements for the types, materials and pressure grades of valve equipment are also different, which also results in further market segmentation of valve equipment for different industries.

3. The gap of brand influence. According to the data, many foreign valve manufacturers in various professional fields, their brand effectiveness has been significantly ahead of domestic enterprises. The water treatment industry, including VAG and Watts, has already established a leading position in the market; Velan is the absolute leader in the power industry; Fisher and KTM in the petrochemical industry can be seen everywhere; engineers under high pressure conditions. First came Uhde and BASF in Germany.

4. The gap of industrial structure. China's valve production enterprises are too small in scale and too low in industrial concentration. According to the data of Watts Company, there are about 3000 valve manufacturers in China, ranking first in the world. However, most of them are low-level, small-scale, family workshop-type enterprises, with annual sales revenue of less than 500 million yuan, annual sales revenue of more than 100 million yuan only a dozen enterprises, market share of the top 10 enterprises only 8%-9% of the total market share. Due to the low degree of industrial concentration, there are many unfavorable factors, such as backward technology, low price competition, lack of influential brands and so on. So far, there is no real brand name in such a huge Chinese valve market.

In this case, valve manufacturers have chosen a professional development path, they are not satisfied with the production of a single valve equipment, but through product line expansion or seeking cooperation, committed to providing the overall solution for the entire project. Watts is a typical example. At first, they only produced valves for water treatment, but now they can even build a water plant independently.