High pressure valve technology in China has become a bottleneck in the valve market

Valves are essential fluid control equipment in various sectors of the national economy, including petroleum, chemical, power plants, long-distance pipelines, shipbuilding, nuclear industry, various low-temperature engineering, aerospace, and offshore oil extraction. After years of development, China has the largest number of valve enterprises in the world, with over 6000 valve enterprises of various sizes, including 900 with an annual output value exceeding 5 million yuan.

In the current valve market in our country, except for low-pressure valves that reach an acceptable level in the international market, high-pressure valves still need to rely on imports. Under the sustained bullish macroeconomic situation, most enterprises in the valve industry have maintained rapid growth in production and sales indicators. However, due to the impact of price wars, the industry's sales revenue and profits have significantly decreased compared to the same period last year. With the recovery of the world economy, the import and export of valve products in China have also increased. However, due to the significant gap in high-end technology compared to foreign manufacturers, product technology will become a bottleneck restricting the development of valve products in China in the coming period.

At present, there are still some problems in China's valve industry, such as the fact that valve enterprises in China are mainly low-level, small-scale, and family workshop style enterprises. In terms of products, due to repeated investment and insufficient technology introduction, the leading products of valve enterprises in China are still low-quality mass products. At present, various valves produced by Chinese enterprises generally have disadvantages such as external leakage, internal leakage, low appearance quality, short service life, inflexible operation, and unreliable electric and pneumatic valve devices. Some products are only equivalent to the international level of the early 1980s, and some valves required for high temperature, high pressure, and critical devices still rely on imports. In addition, there is a significant gap between China's valve industry and foreign enterprises in terms of industrial structure, valve industry chain, and industry specialization.

The reason for the low quality of domestic valve products is that due to the rapid expansion of the market, the original state-owned valve enterprises have been shut down and transformed one after another. Although a group of township enterprises have developed rapidly, due to their low starting point, weak technical strength, and simple equipment, most of their products are imitated for production, especially the serious problem of low-pressure valves for water supply and drainage.

From the perspective of product situation, China's valve industry can currently produce more than ten categories of products, such as gate valves, globe valves, ball valves, butterfly valves, safety valves, check valves, throttle valves, plug valves, pressure reducing valves, diaphragm valves, drain valves, emergency shut-off valves, etc. The maximum operating temperature reaches 570, the lowest is -196, the highest pressure is 600MPa, and the maximum diameter reaches 5350 millimeters. In addition, according to relevant departments, the annual transaction volume of China's valve market is about 50 billion yuan, of which more than 10 billion yuan of the market is occupied by foreign valve enterprises.

But the above issues do not affect the broad prospects of China's valve industry in the future. This is mainly due to the support of national policies and strong demand in the valve product market, especially the commencement of several century projects such as the West East Gas Pipeline, West East Power Transmission, and South to North Water Diversion, which require a large amount of valve product matching. In addition, China is facing the arrival of the industrialization era, and major users of valves in the petrochemical industry, power industry, metallurgical industry, chemical industry, and urban construction will increase their demand for valve products. For example, during the 11th Five Year Plan period in the power industry, the total predicted demand for valves for large and medium-sized coal-fired power unit projects is 153000 tons of valves, with an average annual demand of 30600 tons; The total demand for valves is 3.96 billion yuan, with an average annual demand of 792 million yuan. In addition, China is gradually becoming the world's largest processing plant, and the processing and manufacturing of valve products face greater development space.

From this, it can be seen that as long as enterprises can seize opportunities, strengthen research and development capabilities, continuously improve product technology content and product quality, they can occupy an active position in fierce market competition.