Demand shows warming trend in the three major application areas!

The economy degree of cemented carbide industry is on the rise

In cutting tools area: demand stability

In cutting tools, cemented carbide is mainly used as tool materials, such as knives, milling cutters, planer, drill bits, boring knives, etc., for cutting cast iron, non-ferrous metals, plastics, chemical fiber, graphite, glass, stone and ordinary steel, can also be used to cut heat-resistant steel, stainless steel, high manganese steels, tool steel and other difficult materials. Cutting mainly rely on machine tools to achieve, at present, the amount of cemented carbide used in China's cutting tools accounts for about 1/3 of the total carbide production, of which the use of welding tools accounted for about 78%, for transposable tools accounted for about 22%. Cutting tools are mainly used in manufacturing, cemented carbide cutting tools is widely used in high-speed machining field because of its excellent properties (high strength, high toughness, high hardness, good thermal stability and thermal rigidity). Downstream traditional industries such as mechanical vehicles, ships, railways, molds, textiles, etc., high-end and emerging applications include aerospace, information industry and so on. Among them, machinery and automobile manufacturing is the most important application field of cemented carbide cutting tools in metal cutting.

First look at the machinery industry, machining solutions are the core products of the cemented carbide industry chain, oriented to downstream CNC machine tools, aerospace, mechanical mold processing, ships, marine engineering equipment and other manufacturing and processing fields. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's general and special equipment manufacturing output value growth rate of 2015 years after bottoming out, two consecutive years of recovery. 2017, the general equipment manufacturing output value of 4.7 trillion yuan, a 8.5% increase in the same year, special equipment manufacturing output value of 3.66 trillion yuan, an increase of 10.2%. With the overall recovery of fixed asset investment in manufacturing, the demand for processing solutions in the machinery industry will usher in a further rebound. In automobile manufacturing, one of the most important tooling in automobile manufacturing is tool mould, and cemented carbide tool mould is its most important component. According to the Office for National Statistics, total car production in China increased from 9.6154 million vehicles in 2008 to 29.942 million in 2017, with an average growth rate of 12.03%. Although growth tends to decline in the last two years, the consumer demand for cemented carbide cutting tools in the automotive sector will remain stable in the context of a high base. Overall, in the field of cutting, the traditional automobile and machinery industry is growing steadily, and the demand for cemented carbide is relatively stable. By 2018-2019, the consumption of cemented carbide was expected to reach 12,500 tons and 13900 tons, respectively, and the growth rate remained above double digits.

In terms of mineral tools, cemented carbide is mainly used as rock drilling tools, mining tools, drilling tools, product forms include impact rock drilling brazing head, geological exploration drill bit, mining oilfield submersible drilling, wheel drill and coal cutting machine cutting teeth, building materials industry impact drill and so on. Cemented carbide mining tools play an important role in coal oil, metal minerals, infrastructure construction and so on. Cemented carbide consumed by mineral appliances accounts for about 25%-28% of the weight of cemented carbide. At present, China is still in the middle stage of industrialization, energy resource demand growth rate is slowing down, but the total demand will still maintain a high operation, it is expected that by 2020, China's primary energy consumption of about 5 billion tons of standard coal, iron ore 750 million tons of ore, refined copper 13.5 million tons, the original aluminum 35 million tons. Under the background of high demand operation, the trend decline of mineral grade further forced mining enterprises to increase capital expenditure, such as the average grade of gold ore fell from 10.0 g/ton in the early 70 to about 1.4 grams/ton in 2017.      

This needs to maintain the stability of metal production by increasing the output of raw ore, thus driving the demand for mining tools to pick up. The demand for cemented carbide in geological mining tools will continue to increase significantly in the next two years as the prices of coal, oil and metals remain high and the willingness to exploit exploration continues to pick up, and demand growth is expected to remain at around 20% per cent in 2018-2019.