China is the country with the largest consumption of steel and welding materials in the world. According to relevant statistics in 2016, China's steel production was 1.138 billion tons, accounting for more than half of the world's steel production, and its welding material production was about 5.68 million tons, accounting for more than half of the world's welding material production. Today, I will introduce to you the development trend of China's demand for welding materials in the future and briefly describe the development trend of welding materials in the future.

1. Market demand for welding materials and current demand by industry

1. Market demand will continue to increase

The report of the 18th CPC National Congress clearly pointed out that one of the main tasks of my country's economic construction in the 21st century is to basically achieve industrialization. my country is now in the mid-term development stage of industrialization. The history of countries around the world shows that when a country is in the period of industrialization, the consumption of steel and welding materials will continue to grow. For example, the consumption of steel and welding materials in the United States and Japan reached its peak when they basically completed industrialization in the 1970s, and then declined steadily.

In the next 10 years, my country's steel and welding material consumption will continue to grow, but the growth rate will slow down moderately, and the focus will be on product variety adjustment and quality improvement. According to relevant experts, my country's steel consumption may reach 1.2 to 1.5 billion tons in 10 years. Therefore, the corresponding demand for welding materials may reach 7 to 8 million tons.

2. According to the demand of the industry

According to industry demand, the biggest difference between my country's steel and welding materials and those of developed countries is that in recent years, my country's construction steel accounts for about 55%, and industrial manufacturing steel accounts for less than 45%, while the current construction steel accounts for only 22%~30% in the United States, Europe and Japan, and industrial manufacturing steel accounts for 60%~66%. This difference also reflects the characteristics of my country's current development stage, with a large number of infrastructure and urbanization construction.

2. The main development trend of welding materials

1. The progress of welding automation promotes the adjustment of welding material variety structure

In the mid-1980s, welding rods accounted for about 50% of welding materials in developed countries. By 2004, welding rods accounted for less than 20% of welding materials consumed in Europe, North America (the United States and Canada), and Japan. In other words, automated and semi-automated welding in developed countries now accounts for more than 80% of the total welding workload.

2. Advances in steel technology have led to the upgrading of welding materials and improvement of their quality

my country is striving to develop from a large steel country to a strong steel country. In recent years, it has launched a large number of upgraded and high-performance and high-quality steel products. In particular, the technical level of production equipment in the steel industry has made great progress. For example, more than ten sets of medium and thick plate rolling mills that will be put into production one after another will have performance that exceeds the existing rolling mills in Japan and the United States, becoming the world's new generation of modern medium and thick plate rolling mills, laying the equipment foundation for realizing controlled rolling and controlled cooling technology and producing large quantities of high-performance medium and thick plates.

3. For common welding materials with large quantity and wide application, the market orientation of high quality and high price should be promoted.

The common welding materials with the largest production and consumption in my country at present include carbon steel electrodes such as 422, HJ431 flux, ER50-6 copper-plated welding wire and other products. Due to the expansion of production capacity and oversupply, the domestic and export prices of my country's common welding materials are only equivalent to 50% to 60% of the prices of similar high-quality welding materials in the international market. Some welding material companies have even adopted the vicious competition means of "low cost, low quality and low price". Therefore, in recent years, many domestic users have reported that the quality of some common welding materials such as 422 electrodes has not only not improved, but has regressed.

The foreign market reflects that the ordinary welding materials exported by some Chinese companies are "low-quality parallel imports". Although they are cheap, they are of poor quality and can only be used in minor projects, which has had a bad impact on my country's "welding material image".

4. Promote cooperation with steel mills to solve the problem of welding wire variety shortage

The main bottleneck in the development of welding materials in my country is that the variety and quality of gas shielded solid welding wire and submerged arc welding solid welding wire cannot meet the market demand. Including high-strength steel welding wires of various strength levels, heat-resistant steel welding wires, low-temperature steel welding wires, atmospheric corrosion-resistant steel welding wires, stainless steel welding wires, etc. As for the so-called copper-free welding wires currently launched by domestic and foreign manufacturers, they should be called special coated welding wires. Due to the different coating compositions and surface treatment methods of various manufacturers, the performance of the welding wires is also different. Excellent coating and surface treatment processes not only play the role of rust prevention and lubrication, do not produce copper smoke during welding, but also can improve the arc stability of the welding wire and reduce welding spatter. At present, domestic and foreign manufacturers are still continuously improving the coating and surface treatment process of this welding wire. It is expected that this welding wire can be matched with a digital inverter welding machine that accurately controls the arc transition to achieve high-efficiency, low-splash high-current CO2 welding, and achieve a process effect equivalent to flux-cored wire welding, which is the future development direction.