Facilitate the Abrasives Industry's Development by Utilizing Relevant Industry Policies

The abrasives industry has been regarded as the "industrial teeth", which has been playing an irreplaceable role in the manufacturing industries, such as the aeronautics and astronautics industry, shipbuilding, car production, the metallurgic industry, rail transit, power generating equipment, the strategic emerging industries, the petrochemical industry, the textile industry, the energy material industry, etc.

Nowadays, with the progress of the third technology revolution, the economic patterns in China and the world have gone through tremendous changes, and the information technology and the Internet economy have been developing at a fast speed. All the changes have brought about big opportunities as well as challenges to the abrasives industry in China. China's abrasives industry should develop along with the government's strategic direction, and make the best of the relevant industry policies to promote high-quality development by keeping its competitive force and industry advantages,

The Problems, Opportunities, and Challenges

1. Overcapacity Leads to Increased Competition
In recent years, China's abrasives industry has seen some improvement, some key enterprises have maintained a good momentum of growth, however, there are many problems in the sustainable and stable development of the entire abrasives industry, such as the shortage of resources, the increasing environmental pressure, the rising demand of the customers', the intensifying trade friction in export sales, overcapacity problem for major products, fiercer competition, squeezed profit margins, and increased operation costs.

According to relevant statistics, since 2013, the average overcapacity rate of the major products in China's abrasives industry was higher than 50%.

2. Poor Capability of Independent Innovation
The abrasives companies in China are lack of capability of independent innovation, high-end products mainly depend on import. Most of the companies target product tracking R & D and production, the independent research is rarely seen. What they have been provided for customers are not solutions or substitute products, but simply meet the requirement. In addition, the companies' marketing modes are not well integrated with the Internet economy, some traditional abrasives products are faced with the risk of being replaced by superhard products or coated abrasives products.

3. The Existing Production Modes Require Changing
The changes are supposed to made towards three major directions. The first one is to transform from manufacturing type to services, namely, to provide complete solutions and value-added services. The second one is to transform from single developing patterns to digitalization and intelligence. The last one is to transform from imitation to independent innovation in product design. Besides that, the abrasives companies in China should also target high-end markets, bring industry cluster effect into play, transform from extensive economy to intensive economy, etc.

4. New Challenges & Opportunities
The world famous abrasives enterprises have accelerated the market and production layout in the Chinese market. Middle and high-end market competition will become white hot in the future. Meanwhile, the emerging economies in the Middle East, India, South America, and Southeast Asia are building and developing abrasives factories, which poses a threat to China's traditional market. Domestically, the abrasives companies strategic restructuring is speeding up and the industry layout is evolving rapidly, which make SMEs endangered. In addition, the combination of information technology and industrial technologies has ushered in a new developing stage for the abrasives industry, along with revolutionary changes and a leap in productivity.

China's Relevant Industry Policies

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party has put forward an important issue, that is, how to realize innovation promotion and rehabilitate China's economic vitality via deepening reform. The development of China's abrasives industry can't be separated from the guidance and support of the government's policies.

The support of the Chinese government is focused on four parts: scientific and technological innovation; strategic emerging industries' development, such as energy saving and environmental protection, biochemistry, high-end equipment manufacturing, new energy, new materials, and new energy vehicles; clean production and the combination of industrialization and enterprise information; the Internet economy and platform build-up.

Directions that Require Attention in the Abrasives Industry

1. Scientific & Technological Innovation
For the abrasives industry, its products can be categorized based on usage by grinding and non-grinding. The technological innovation and development of abrasives should focus on the following aspects:

Abrasives for grinding such as silicon carbide and brown fused alumina that belong to the limited products in the national industrial restructuring directory, so the innovation should be focused on R & D of new materials, the modification and processing of abrasives, the development of compound abrasives materials, the development of the new usages of abrasives, and the design of the abrasives structure.

For abrasives that are not used for grinding, corundum and silicon carbide should be transformed to high-temperature composites and functional materials. In terms of researching approach, the abrasives companies in China are suggested to analyze from chemical composites, grit sizes, toughness, and grinding performances so as to develop towards micro crystal structure, crystal sizes and shapes, etc. After all, the developing direction is highly effective precision abrasive tools.

2. Green Manufacturing & Smart Manufacturing
Green manufacturing means that all the processes from product design, materials usage, manufacturing process, packaging and recycling should be harmless to the environment. Smart manufacturing signifies that during the whole manufacturing process, including raw materials, cold processing, hot processing, inspection, and finished products, should be submitted to the users. There are three "flows", the information flow, the material flow, and the energy flow. The three flows should be kept highly effective and smooth so as to make right decisions and achieve smart manufacturing during the whole process.

Author: Liwei Chu 
Copyright: iAbrasive.com--Abrasives & Diamond Tools Market