The annual demand for piston rings with the vehicle market will reach 1.2 billion pieces

As the key component of the heart of the engine, the piston ring is in harmony with the development of the engine and the automotive industry and is co-prosperous and prosperous. In 2009, the domestic piston ring market accompanied the rapid growth of the vehicle market, and there has also been a scene of booming production and sales. However, long-standing problems in the industry have not been resolved.

In 2009, the market for the piston ring industry could be described as follows: orders got, prices went down, lots went up, and efficiency fell.

In 2009, the performance of the domestic piston ring plant in the market can be described as ups and downs: After the fourth quarter of 2008, limited production, inventory reduction, employees have nothing to do a holiday break, to the market in the first quarter of 2009 started slowly; from the second quarter, in the country The rapid and high growth under the stimulus of the policy can be described as two-fold. In 2009, for the piston ring and even auto parts companies, it should be a year of big harvest. However, manufacturers competed for the limited domestic market and launched price wars. Price diving is the biggest feature of the market during this period.

In the boom of the automotive market in 2009, many under-ordered and under-delivered conditions encountered by piston ring plants have continued to occur, and customers have complained at the same time; It almost caused a vicious circle. The orders owed are mainly products for light trucks, mini-vehicles, and cars. The production capacity of medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles is not saturated.

Increasing the export volume of piston rings is an important reason for the increase in sales volume of piston ring manufacturers in the past two years. Due to the abundant production capacity of domestic piston rings and relatively low product prices, many companies in countries and regions such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Russia have been sourcing from China. In 2009, due to the impact of the international financial crisis, the export market for piston rings for vehicles has fallen drastically, which is basically above 30%. Most of the manufacturers have to turn their heads to fight for the domestic market and find small customers who have worked together.

The high-margin era of the piston ring industry has long since come to an end. After two years of “squeezing”, the profit margin has been minimal, and some of the poorly-operated manufacturers have entered the brink of losses. In the first 5 to 10 years, there were a large number of new entrants in the piston ring industry. In the past two years, there have been so many outsiders blindly investing in the piston ring industry.

According to Zhou Songliu, deputy general manager and senior engineer of Yizheng Shuanghuan Piston Ring Co., Ltd., there were 44 piston ring plants in the country thirty-four years ago, of which 43 were state-owned enterprises and one was a township-owned enterprise; there were six companies that produced automobile rings. The rest are production of agricultural machinery rings and air compressor rings. Now the situation in this industry has undergone a fundamental change: 6 domestic foreign-funded companies occupy more than 80% of the high-end market for piston rings, have formed a monopoly, and have developed integrated components for auto parts, starting from the production of piston rings and production. Four sets of cylinder liners, pistons, piston pins, etc., and continue to expand to produce intake and exhaust systems consisting of intake valves, valve seats, ducts, and springs.

There are 300 private enterprises in the piston ring industry, basically all producing medium and low-grade products. The scale of the company is small, and the economic efficiency is poor. Many enterprises are difficult to survive. A very small number of private enterprises, which account for about 1% to 2%, have developed relatively well. They can compete with foreign-funded enterprises on some gasoline engine piston rings.

Piston ring enterprises have formed regional clusters. Yizheng Ring, Anqing Ring, etc. are not historically designated as "Yizheng Shuanghuan and Anqing ATG" but a geographical concept. In a specific area, there are at least 4 to 5 piston ring enterprises and 40 to 50 companies. The areas where piston ring-related products are relatively concentrated are: Yizheng, Anqing, Wenzhou, Ruian, Quanzhou, etc. The most typical is that there are more than 6 piston ring plants within 1 km of a township in Pingyang County.

At present, Yizheng Shuanghuan, Anqing Emperor Bogets, Fujian East Asia, Nanjing Feiyan, Changsha Zhengyuan, Shijiazhuang Jingang Group, and Shanghai Fuzhou Autotrans Group have a large market share in the domestic market. , has a strong market competitiveness. Among them, the joint venture's piston ring production accounts for more than 40% of the total output of the piston rings in the country. The annual output of Yizheng Double Ring Pistons Co., Ltd. and Anqing Emperor Burgers Piston Ring Co., Ltd. exceeds 100 million pieces, which is a leading position in the domestic industry.

The power of piston ring technology development comes from two aspects: First, the development of the whole machine promotes the progress of the piston ring technology, the level of independent research and development of the whole machine will increase, and the piston ring technology will also increase; secondly, the piston ring enterprises take the high-end technology route. Actively promote the application of new technologies on the whole machine. The technological development trend of the piston ring industry in recent years is the material steelization, the thinning of the piston ring, and the high-end surface treatment.

Because the piston ring is not only a key component of the engine, but also one of the most demanding friction parts in the engine, the piston ring is required to have high wear resistance. The search for new materials and new surface treatment processes has become a major technical concern for the piston ring industry to meet future market demands.

Another trend in the development of piston ring technology is that the height of piston rings has become smaller, ie thinner. When the height of the piston ring becomes smaller, the tightness between the piston ring and the cylinder liner is strengthened to reduce the chance of oil entering the combustion chamber, which can reduce emission pollution.

There is still a certain gap between domestic piston ring enterprises and foreign countries in terms of technology research and development, which is manifested in four aspects: First, domestic enterprises are in the initial stage of innovation or basically have no innovation ability in terms of materials and surface treatment; second, they lack product platforms. Frame verification equipment; Third, domestic companies lack product design experience, only in recent years began to accumulate a variety of data; Fourth, the domestic level of technology is affected by the equipment, complex products can hardly guarantee production capacity.

Because the piston ring industry has been scattered for a long time and the technology level is low, many industry players have called for the integration of the piston ring industry to survive. But that is not the case. According to industry experts, the number of domestic piston ring enterprises has not only been reduced as compared with the year-by-year reduction of foreign countries, but the development of the market has not only become more standardized but has become more disorderly. The main reason is that the diversified demand for products determines that the number of Chinese parts and components companies will not decrease in a considerable period of time.

According to statistics, there are only 50 piston ring related companies in the area around Yizheng Shuanghuan. The facts show that many long-term spare parts manufacturers still survive. China produces about 40 million engines per year, including nearly 10 million cars and commercial vehicles, and more than 30 million motorcycles, agricultural vehicles, construction machinery, and marine engines. If the piston ring manufacturers do not have the ability to supply cars or commercial vehicles, they can also supply other vehicles, or they can supply a large number of aftermarket services.

With the rapid development of China's auto market, China's automotive engine and piston ring market will usher in new opportunities for development.

According to Xinhua's 2009 forecast report, passenger car sales in 2010 will reach 11.32 million, an increase of 15.2% year-on-year; commercial vehicle sales will reach 3.79 million, an increase of 15.3% year-on-year. In 2010, the growth rate of the automobile market will slow down, with an annual sales volume of 15.12 million units, a year-on-year increase of 15.2%.

According to forecast, in the passenger vehicle host market, each vehicle is calculated as four-cylinder, requiring 130.84 million piston rings; in the commercial vehicle host market, commercial vehicles are four-cylinder and six-cylinder, and each vehicle is calculated as five cylinders and requires piston rings. 56.85 million pieces, a total of 192.69 million piston rings were required for the automotive main engine installed market. However, at present, there are 170 million motor vehicles in China, excluding 1/3 of motorcycles, and about 102 million vehicles (including low-speed vehicles). The piston rings are changed every year according to 4 cylinders per vehicle. Demand reached 1.24 billion, which is a huge demand market.