◎ Chen Zhihai
| In recent years, the overall operation of China’s cycle tires industry changed in silence. Due to serious structural overcapacity of the industry, relatively high product homogeneity degree, fierce market competition, etc., some medium-and small-sized enterprises gradually quit the historical stage, however, the basic layout is not completely broken and the auction is still in a dominant position. Cycle tires industry urgently needs to enhance the internal cost control and optimize procurement strategy and digest the factors increasing the expenditure and reducing the profit within the limited price adjustment space. Meanwhile, the enterprises also have to face the constantly increasing labor cost brought about by disappearance of demographic dividend and pressure brought about by upgrading of national environmental regulation campaign to traditional manufacturing industry. |
“External pressure + internal cause” force cycle tires industry to actively explore and vigorously innovate in the aspects such as energy conservation and emission reduction, greening and environmental protection and intelligent production, and the backbone enterprises in the industry are striding forward to the target of high-quality development.
Difficulty and pressure are prominent during economic operation
According to the statistic data provided by CRIA Cycle Tires Branch, from January to September 2018, the main economic operation indexes of the industry were stable and better, however, the production and operation of the enterprises still faced much difficulty and pressure.
Fig. 1: Quarterly Growth Conditions of Industrial Output of Member Enterprises
Fig. 2: Quarterly Growth Conditions of Realized Profit of Member Enterprises
As for 32 main member enterprises, the total casing output of three vehicles, bicycle, electric bicycle and motorcycle, was 317 million units, with the average output as about 100 million units; for the supporting and replacement demands, the output of inner tube was larger than that of casing to reach 491 million units. The sales revenue had a growth (on a year-on-year basis, the same below) of 9.43%, the sales-output ratio of the main products kept above 94%; the export delivery value had a growth of 2.75%, with a decrease of 3.50%; the export rate (value) was 24.87%, with a decrease of 1.58%. More finished products lay in the storehouse, and the inventory amount increased by 21.1%.
The good news is that the industrial profit increased by 15.9%, with the year-on-year increase turning from negative to positive, however, the growth surface only accounted for 40% of the enterprises under statistics. These 2/5 backbone enterprises drive the profit growth of the whole industry.
Accelerating capacity structural adjustment and vigorously improving the overall operation quality of the industry are still main tasks faced by cycle tires industry at this stage.
Taking new development mode of “green production + intelligent manufacturing”
Facing the development difficulties of the industry, the backbone enterprises started with two aspects, actively had internal interests in mind while effectively coping with external pressure to take the path of “green production + intelligent manufacturing” and led the industry toward high-quality development target.
The input in discharge of “three wastes” and environmental control were increased. Several key enterprises and partial medium- and small-sized enterprises in the industry had completed environmental transformations such as “turning coal into gas”, “turning coal into electricity” and “turning coal into biofuel”, two or three large enterprises still using coal-fired boilers also separately invested Tens of Millions Yuan to carry out transformation and upgrading of boiler drainage system and monitoring system. In addition, in the aspect of collection and treatment of waste gas generated during production of rubber tires, the enterprises also successively carried out comparative analysis and practical exploration of multiple common waste gas treatment processes and effects in combination with the industrial features and status quo, although the processes were different, the similar effect was achieved. Meanwhile, partial enterprises also perfected the green eco-friendly processes in some key points, such as automatic weighing of condiments, pipe conveying of carbon black, disposable continuous mixing, automatic shaping, high-temperature nitrogenization and vulcanization and variable frequency control. One Taiwan-funded enterprise even continuously invested over 130 Million Yuan in environmental control.
Intelligent and automatic production realized “local breakthrough”. After vulcanization of casing and inner tube started to promote application of robot or manipulator operation, latest generation of casing spring anti-package building machine had been successfully developed, whose largest advantage was higher automation degree (except that putting bead ring into locating notch and taking out billet are operated manually, the other links are operated automatically), which not only greatly lowers the labor strength of the workers and improves the quality stability of the products, but also has higher production efficiency, with shift output of single machine reaching 400~700 units. It can realize full-automatic operation by matching with a group of intelligent manipulators, which is a significant leap of the industry in realizing automation of single machine in key process.
Multiple new special building machines for cycle tires such as two-stage building machine for motorcycle radial tire and double-station building machine for motorcycle and electrocar tires enter the R&D ending, commissioning and perfection stage, and some have been put into use.
Through one stage of technical tackling, the main problems encountered during R&D of linkage equipment for automatic cutting and automatic laminating and coiling of rubber cord fabric have been solved basically and are believed to be widely put into production and application shortly.
In recent two years, on the basis of accelerating popularization and application of bladder curing press, multiple new technologies such as double-chamber three-layer single opened energy-saving vulcanizing machine, electrically heating vulcanizing machine and plastic elastic foam tire injection vulcanizing machine are also developed and applied.
It shall be seen that in the aspect of accuracy of automatic testing and automatic control as well as the aspect of lowering manual operation degree of production process, finished product inspection and packaging process, further communication and exchange with the equipment manufacturers are still required. After these difficulties are solved, the problem of “difficult recruitment” troubling industry development can be readily solved, and the product quality stability and production efficiency will be effectively improved.
The confidence and impetus for industry development are being enhanced
At present, the favorable conditions and adverse factors affecting the economic operation of cycle tires industry co-exist, we shall make the best use of the circumstances and seize the momentum, consolidate and develop the development trend that the overall operation of the industry is stable and becomes better, and simultaneously further grasp the new opportunity of transformation development and strive to form and constantly enhance new impetus for enterprise development.
The main favorable conditions are embodied in the following aspects:
Firstly, led by the new development concept of “the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China”, the nation and local governments successively launch a series of policies and measures of revitalizing the real economy and supporting development of small and micro enterprises to reduce the taxes and lower the expenses, realizing impetus conversion. Upon multiple appeals of the CRIA, the nation increased the export rebate rate of the products such as motorcycle casing and inner tube to 13% (implemented from November 1, 2018), thus providing timely and necessary support for the cycle tires industry with a large proportion of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises and large pressure of operation cost.
Secondly, in recent years, the key environmental protection correction projects of the scale enterprises and a partial small- and medium-sized enterprises in the industry were implemented successively, partial low-end capacities exiting in the preceding stage make some market space, the competition of the product price becomes less fierce and will gradually return to rational, and promotion of high-quality development driven by innovation has become a consensus of the industry.
Thirdly, along with launch of new national standard on electric bicycle, the development of light electric motor further becomes standardized, the overall capacity is expected to keep stable during transformation and upgrading. It is expected that the output of various light electric motors will continue keeping an increase trend and the demand for the tires of various electric motors will increase correspondingly.
Fourthly, along with social development and enhancement of the residents’ consumption ability, the demand for medium and high-end cycle tire products and featured products continues to grow, the protection of the nation for proprietary intellectual property right is enhanced, the enthusiasm of the enterprise for R&D of new technologies and new products is aroused and the confidence and impetus of the industry for high-quality development are being enhanced.
