NEWS
The energy crisis in Europe brings great pressure to the cost control of European manufacturing enterprises. Russia is Europe's largest source of imports in gas, oil and coal. In 2021, Russian gas, crude oil and coal accounted for 45 per cent, 27 per cent and 46 per cent of European imports respectively, while 74 per cent of Russian gas, 49 per cent of Russian oil and 32 per cent of Russian coal exports went to Europe. Europe has a high degree of rigid dependence on Russian pipeline gas, and it is difficult to find alternative suppliers. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has had a huge impact on Europe's energy supply, with the rapid growth of natural gas and power processing in Europe. The high price of upstream energy will significantly increase the manufacturing cost of enterprises, and enterprises' capital expenditure and production expansion will decrease.
Overseas cutting tool enterprise cost is high, some enterprises have raised prices for many times. Since 2022, leading overseas enterprises have started to raise prices, Kenner Metal Tools decided to raise the price of relevant tools by 9%~10% from October 1, 2022; Walter plans to implement the 2023 price list from October 1, 2022; The Sandvik Cola 2023 price will go into effect on September 1, 2022, increasing the price of the product by about 8% worldwide; Yamawa-10 percent or more for orders from August 1, 2022 and later; Chunbao Senla Precision Cutting Tools will increase its selling prices by an average of 4.9% from October 1, 2022; The price of Sangao Cutters will increase by 7.8% from September 1, 2022. And some enterprises at the beginning of the year has been the price adjustment, including Sandvik, Iska and so on. The main reasons for the price hike include the increase in raw material processing due to the energy crisis in Europe, rising inflation, and the increase in labor and logistics costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Domestic enterprises have a smaller price increase, and the advantage of price performance is more prominent. Domestic companies also had a price increase at the beginning of the year, among which Xiamen Golden Lu announced a 3%-7% price increase for some cutting tools from January 1, 2022, and Okoyi announced a 2%-6% price increase for some products from January 1, 2022. In the second half of the "price rise tide", the domestic tool enterprises issued a price increase letter of the enterprise is very few, in the background of overseas tool enterprises "collective" price rise, the advantage of the domestic tool price performance will be more prominent, but also the historical opportunity of domestic tool replacement. Domestic excellent tool enterprises have listed, the capital market to help the company to expand the scale. In recent years, there have been a number of domestic listed companies listed, including Xinrui shares, Sinovel Precision, Okoyi, Wald, etc., their initial fundraising between 400 million and 1.5 million. Okoyi 2022 private placement raised another 800 million yuan, after the IPO raised a total of about 1.4 billion yuan. Huarui Precision successfully issued convertible bonds in 2022, raising 400 million yuan, and raised a total of 810 million yuan after listing. With sufficient capital, these companies began to further expand production capacity, expand new product lines, and lay the foundation for long-term growth.
A large number of domestic high - end numerical control blade production expansion, the replacement of Japanese and Korean cutting tools obvious trend. Recently, many listed tool companies have production expansion plans. The production capacity of 40 million CNC blades and 5 million cermet blades has been planned respectively in the first and private addition projects of Aoke Billion. In the first project of Huarui Precision, 30 million new carbide CNC blades and 5 million cermet CNC blades have been planned. Xinruishare, Wald and other enterprises have also expanded production. Through the statistics of the expansion of the above several companies, we believe that the new production capacity of Chinese cutting tools is expected to exceed 114 million pieces in recent years, and a considerable part of the new production capacity is medium and high-end blade products, which will achieve a large number of Japanese and Korean brands replacement.
Enterprise product line expansion, customization ability to improve. The product layout of most tool manufacturers in our country is relatively single, usually involving only one kind of cutting tool materials or cutting tools. Except for a few enterprises such as high-tungsten, Xiamen Jinlu and other enterprises that have various types of numerical control blades, whole cutting tools, most companies only have one kind of numerical control blades or whole cutting tools, and the application scenarios of numerical control blades are less, Lack of customization. In recent years, with the rapid growth of domestic tool enterprises, many tool enterprises began to expand the type of tools. Ouke Yi lays out ceramic cutting tools, integral carbide cutting tools and CNC tool body products through private placement projects, while Huarui Precision also lays out integral carbide cutting tools, ceramic cutting tools and CNC tool body products by using initial public offering funds and convertible bond funds. Xinrui shares are also planning ceramic blade business. Wald from the superhard tool business into the carbide tool business. It can be seen that domestic tool enterprises began to expand their product lines significantly, in order to enhance their customization ability, so as to enhance their competitiveness.
