In recent years, the tire industry and enterprises have grasped reducing capacity, adjusting structure, promoting upgrading and creating a new situation of tire industry as important work and made some achievements. From 2016 to the third quarter of 2017, the total tire capacity eliminated by the whole industry was: 7.30 million units of bias tires and 18 million units of ordinary radial tires, including 10 million units of all-steel tires and 8 million units of semi-steel tires; and 10 tire factories are eliminated and quit or transformed. Meanwhile, production of low-end products is strictly controlled and development of middle and high-end products is encouraged. At present, the output of all-steel radial tires without tube in the whole industry accounts for about 45% of the total output while that of high-performance semi-steel radial tires accounts for about 40%, and the product structure has been obviously changed to strive to adapt to the new demand of domestic and overseas tire markets.
Adopting various forms to promote transformation and upgrading
Firstly, take full advantage of market mechanism and guide the enterprises to accelerate merger and reorganization. Support and encourage the tire enterprises to carry out joint development such as trans-regional asset restructuring, equity cooperation, asset replacement, strategic alliance and diversified ownership to improve the resource allocation efficiency of tire industry. In recent years, 8 enterprises have been jointly reconstructed successively to cultivate a batch of enterprise groups with international competitiveness. In 2016, the tire sales of top 10 enterprises in the whole industry account for 60% of the total sales of 41 main member enterprises. Among the Top 75 Global Tire in 2017 published by American Tire Commerce, 34 enterprises from Chinese mainland were listed, in which 3 entered top 20, what is specially worthy of praise is that ZC Rubber Group has ranked 10th globally for successive 6 years.
Secondly, carry out industry access notice management on tire enterprises. In April 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China published the list of the first batch of 23 enterprises conforming to the Access Conditions of Tire Industry, and the second batch of 27 applicant enterprises are under review. The implementation of the industry access conditions not only is beneficial to eliminating outdated capacity, but also has the effect of regulating scientific development of tire industry.
Thirdly, promote tire labeling system to make the production of the tire enterprises have standard to obey and the product walk toward middleand high-end. Since 2017, the online declaration and management platform of Chinese tire labels of CRIA has been open to the enterprises for operation, with the principle of self declaration, voluntary posting, CRIA registration, review, management and approval of the enterprise, at present 47 tire enterprises have registered the enterprise information on this platform and 108 tire labels have been issued upon approval. Imple- mentation of tire label system can not only accelerate improvement of tire quality, but also promote transformation and upgrading of tire industry, and meanwhile enable the consumers to judge the tire quality more intuitively, guide green manufacturing and green consumption and promote transformation and upgrading of tire products.
Fourthly, pay attention to capital operation and improve the quality of the tire products. From May to September 2016, 4 enterprises got listed by back door and issue of new shares successively in the whole industry, and the fund of 21.119 Billion Yuan had been raised totally, which was mainly used for transformation and upgrading project of intelligent all-steel radial tires and high-performance passenger car radial tires to improve the quality of the tire products and enhance the market competitiveness.
Fifthly, carry out intelligent manufacturing and green manufacturing and promote the transformation and upgrading as well as green development of the enterprises. When carrying out automatic reform of the existing plants and construction of new projects, the tire enterprises integrate automation, informationization and intelligentization into it to solve the problems such as too many personnel, low efficiency, large energy consumption, heavy odor and product homogenization. Newly built factories such as Wanli, Triangle, Doublestar, Sentury and Double Coin possess high automatic and intelligent functions to become active practitioners for intelligent manufacturing and make contributions to intelligent development, green manufacturing and energy conservation of the industry and promotion of transformation and upgrading of enterprises.
Sixthly, guide the enterprise to “go out” and expand the international market. In recent years, 5 tire enterprises have successively gone to 4 countries to build tire factories, the capacity of overseas factories has been 5.195 million units of all-steel radial tires and 37.80 million units of semi-steel radial tires. Domestic tire enterprises’ “going out” not only avoids “Double Anti” trade friction, but also realizes international operation and expands new space for development of tire industry.
Improving product quality and commercial value
Resolving structural overcapacity is not simple capacity reduction, but reduction of outdated capacity, and the development of tire products of superior enterprises with high technical content shall be supported instead. During the process of reducing capacity, adjusting the structure and promoting upgrading, CRIA leads the tire enterprises to actively carry out the strategy of innovative drive and green development, vigorously develop new products, new technologies and new equipment of tire and provide the society with high-performance, high-value-added and safe and eco-friendly green tires.
Strengthening R&D of Technological Innovation
The tire enterprises transfer from extensive development to connotative development, and vigorously promote the tire industry to transfer to the direction of adjusting structure, promoting transformation and increasing benefits. Tire enterprises and scientific research institutions jointly develop technologically advanced high-performance passenger car radial tire of Grade E, Grade W and Grade V of series 40, 35, 30 and 25, broad-based tubeless truck radial tire, run-flat tire, giant engineering machinery radial tire, agricultural radial tire, aviation radial tire, etc. to optimize the structure and performance of the tire products and newly improve the quality and added-value.
In the aspect of truck radial tire, many enterprises constantly improve and innovate in technical R&D and application according to different use conditions. Seen from the use features of the products, green tire, run-flat tire, broad-based tire, intelligent tire, etc. occur; seen from technical features, the tires develop in the direction of radialization, wide section, flattening, no tube and long service life (can be retreaded), with technical performance reaching internationally advanced level, and the products of over 10 enterprises pass relevant certification of America and EU.
In the aspect of passenger car radial tire, the development of passenger car tire reflects the tire industry level of a country. In recent years, Chinese passenger car tire has achieved world-acclaimed rapid development and has been the variety with the largest output among tires, accounting for 73% of the total output of tires. With diversified performance and specification and rapid upgrading and updating of products, it has become a symbol of modern technical level of tires. Therefore, the tire enterprises pay great attention to the development of new technology of passenger car tires, intensify innovation in shape design and thread pattern and constantly launch new products. For example, “super low section wet-skid resistance low-noise passenger car radial tire” of Shandong Linglong Tire Co., Ltd. won the second prize of National Scientific and Technological Progress Award, with the performance reaching advanced level of like products in the world; during the test of European authority, with the wet-skid performance reaching Grade A of EU Labeling Regulation, Grade A in rolling resistance and 68Db in noise, the high-performance passen- ger car tires developed by Qingdao Sentury Tire Ltd. were popular with domestic and overseas consumers.
In the aspect of giant engineering radial tire, it has been controlled by overseas three companies for long. To change this situation, key domestic tire enterprises break overseas technical and equipment monopoly and independently develop to open up a new path. The project of “Development of Packaged Production Technology and Equipment of Giant Engineering Radial Tire” jointly developed by the tire enterprises and rubber machinery enterprises won the first prize of National Scientific and Technological Progress Award. Giant engineering tire gets a place in market competition, and China respectively exported over 1,400 units and over 1,700 units of giant engineering tires in 2015 and 2016.
In the aspect of aviation radial tire, it is mainly researched, designed and manufactured by the units such as Shuguang Rubber Industry Research & Design Institute, T-rubber Co., Ltd. and Yinchuan Giti and passes various dynamic tests stipulated by the national standard and reaches the installation requirements to become the 4th country having the ability to develop, manufacture and test the aviation radial tires for fighters and transport planes and possessing proprietary intellectual property rights in the world, with the production capacity of aviation radial tires exceeding 10,000 units at present. On July 18, 2017, Shuguang Rubber Industry Research & Design Institute participated in Moscow International Aerospace Exhibition to exhibit advanced technologies, products and services and have commercial negotiation with over 20 overseas companies to achieve good effect. In addition, with the aircraft tire of Boeing 737 Airbus developed by carrying forward the innovation spirit of “eating crabs” successful in test flight and obtaining the MDA and CTSOA certificate issued by Civil Aviation Administration of China, Qingdao Sentury Tire Ltd. became No. 1 among Chinese private tire enterprises.
Application of new materials and new equipment
Eucommea rubber, taraxacum rubber, graphene, carbon nano tube, carbon black (white carbon black), framework material, etc. jointly developed by the tire enterprises and upstream enterprises are applied in tires, new materials are actively promoted, and application of eco-friendly, light-type and recyclable materials in tire is paid attention to develop a batch of new tire products. For example, Linglong Company launched the first unit of taraxacum rubber, Fengyuan Company developed the first unit of tire made of carbon nano tube material, Sentury Company developed the first unit of graphene static conductive tire, and these three tires made of new materials have passed technical evaluation and have been put into batch pilot production.
The tire enterprises actively cooperate with the rubber machinery enterprises to jointly develop and change the design and manufacturing of single machine to enhance the precision, reduce the energy consumption, improve the production efficiency and reduce the cost, and carry out a large amount of technical innovation work, such as low-temperature continuous lump-sum mixing, high temperature nitrogenization vulcanization, electric radiation pre-vulcanization, wet mixing and new equipment such as four-drum forming machine, which achieve good effect in application of tire manufacturing.
(by Cai Weimin)
