Thermal shrinkage material, also known as polymer shape memory material, is a kind of intelligent material that combines polymer material and radiation processing technology. Ordinary macromolecular materials such as polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, etc. are usually linear structures. After the radiation effect of radioactive sources such as electron accelerator becomes a network structure, these materials will have a unique "memory effect". The expanded, cooled and stereotyped materials can shrink back to their original shape after being heated. The memory performance of thermal shrinking materials can be used to make thermal shrinking pipes, films and special materials. The main feature is that the heating shrinkage coating is on the external surface of the object, which can play the roles of insulation, dampproof, sealing, protection and connection. The radial shrinkage rate of the shrinking materials can reach 50-80%. With these special and excellent properties, thermal shrinkage materials are widely used in the industries of electronics, household appliances, communication, power, automobile and pipeline corrosion prevention.
The radiation processing industry of foreign polymer materials developed in the 1950s, and the first polyethylene thermal shrinkable tube patent was applied by American ruikan company in 1959. After more than 40 years of development, ruikan company has developed into a large multinational company with 8000 employees, more than 3000 kinds of shrink product specifications and annual output value of nearly 3 billion us dollars. Globally, rikan of the United States and sumitomo of Japan are the leading companies in the electric power and electronic heat-shrinkable materials market. On the whole, the world heat shrinkable materials market is now in the growth stage, with the average annual growth rate of market demand reaching about 1%.
Domestic basic research on thermal shrinkage materials is basically in sync with international, but the industrial production is relatively lagging behind. In 1994, the institute of chemical engineering of Chinese academy of sciences established changchun thermal shrinkable materials co., LTD., which laid a foundation for the industrialization and scale of thermal shrinkable materials in China.
Enter new high growth period
Total current pyrocondensation material market in China at 3 billion RMB, and from the international scope, only American TYCO electronics products of the company annual sales revenue of $1 billion, power type heat shrinkable products annual sales revenue of $500 million, two types of heat shrinkable products in total sales revenue reached the current domestic more than four times the size of the market, shows that domestic pyrocondensation material product demand growth potential in the future. As China begins to enter the stage of heavy chemical industry, the domestic industrial structure upgrade and the industrial transfer within the international scope make the *** industry with thermal shrinkable materials all become the field with rapid growth rate in the future, which is expected to drive the thermal shrinkable materials industry into a new round of high-growth long term (see table 1).
Rapid growth in the demand for electronic and electrical materials: with the upgrading of the domestic industrial structure, the main application fields of thermal shrinkable materials, such as the electronics and electric appliance industries, have become the fields with the highest growth rate in all industries. According to statistics from the ministry of information industry, in 2004, the total sales revenue of electronic information industry in China reached 2655 billion yuan, up by 42% year-on-year. In the first eight months of 2005, the sales revenue of domestic electronic information industry reached 1482.1 billion yuan, up 40% year on year. In 2004, China's exports of electronic information products reached us $207.5 billion, up 46% year on year. From January to August 2005, the total exports of electronic information products reached us $122.5 billion, up 51% year on year. As the international trend of production capacity of electronic and electrical products is accelerating, the global demand for heat-shrinkable materials is also shifting to China.
The main application fields of heat shrinkable tube for radiation-crosslinked electronic appliance are distributed in the industries of electronics, household appliances, communication and information, automobile, etc. At present, the domestic market capacity is 600 million yuan, of which more than 50% is distributed in the pearl river delta region. Under the background that the electronics and electric appliance industry will continue to grow rapidly in the future, according to the correlation analysis of the electronics industry development on the demand for heat-shrinkable tube products, it is estimated that the annual growth rate of the demand for heat-shrinkable materials of electronic and electric appliances in China will reach about 20-30%. The double-wall pipe and environmental protection heat-shrinkable pipe used in automobile industry take a large proportion in the foreign heat-shrinkable material market, but the domestic application lags behind relatively. As the domestic auto industry begins to enter a high growth period, the auto thermal shrink product market also provides a new target market for domestic manufacturers of thermal shrink materials.
The market growth space of electric power products is vast: during the 11th five-year plan period, China will usher in the climax of power grid investment, railway electrification transformation and urban subway construction. It is expected that the thermal shrinking of electric power products will enter the period of rapid growth of demand. During the "11th five-year plan" period, the power grid investment of China national grid and China southern grid will reach 12,000 to 1.3 trillion yuan, more than double the 580 billion yuan invested by the power grid during the "tenth five-year plan" period. At present, the domestic market demand for high-voltage cable accessories (mainly silicon rubber prefabricated) is about 200 million yuan, and the market capacity of low-voltage and medium-voltage cable accessories is about 310 million yuan. According to the plan of the state power corporation, an average of 20 million KVA was added from 1998 to 2000, and the market demand of power cable accessories will increase by about 20% in the next five years.
According to the ministry of railways' medium - and long-term railway network plan, ministry of railways will invest 2 trillion yuan in railway construction from 2005 to 2020, with an average annual investment of more than 100 billion yuan. According to the national railway construction plan, the construction and transformation of railway electrification will bring about the market demand of 200 to 300 million yuan of radiation crosslinking thermal shrinkage insulation busbar bushing every year. At present, the capacity of the hot shrink busbar market is about 150 million yuan, and the hot shrink busbar market will enter a high growth period, with a short-term growth rate of about 40%.
Pipeline transportation development provides new growth power for heat-shrinkable materials: heat-shrinkable sleeve for steel pipe corrosion protection and pipe covering sheet are mainly used for the protection and anti-corrosion treatment of the following parts in the process of laying metal pipes, which is a new product at the initial stage of growth in China. As domestic energy consumption structure to accelerate the transformation, such as oil, natural gas is suitable for pipeline transport energy proportion gradually increase, also stepped up its construction of several major petrochemical group national crude oil, product oil and gas pipeline system, the domestic pipeline construction quantities will present the growth, for pipeline corrosion protection with pyrocondensation material provides a huge market space. China is investing 200 billion yuan to speed up the network construction of natural gas transportation pipelines, including the west-east gas pipeline, a large number of planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and auxiliary pipelines. During the tenth five-year plan period, China's new natural gas main line reached about 10,000 kilometers. The key project "west-east gas transmission project" in the country's western development strategy has begun to dramatically increase the amount of pipeline cladding in China.
Export market has great potential: while international manufacturers are entering the domestic market one after another, the international market is also open to domestic manufacturers with the improvement of technology level and the enhancement of comprehensive strength. The international market monopoly of thermal shrinkable materials is relatively high. Domestic manufacturers have a large competitive advantage in manufacturing cost, and they are expected to gain considerable market share in the international market by virtue of price advantage in the future. Taking changyuanxincai as an example, the company's products have been successively entered into the markets of Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan and other developing countries. In the first half of 2005, overseas revenue reached 17.18 million yuan, accounting for 10.7% of the main revenue, up 155% year on year.
Both companies deserve attention
In addition to several major multinational companies, the number of domestic thermal shrinkable materials industry enterprises reached 100. However, due to the large scale of investment and high technical difficulty in the major production equipment of electronic accelerator, the number of enterprises that have electronic accelerator and achieve large-scale production is only about a dozen. Among the listed companies, inh and G changyuan are the leading enterprises in the industry.