China has the largest consumption of steel and welding materials in the world. According to relevant statistics in 2006, China's steel output is 420 million tons, accounting for 34% of the world's steel output, and the welding material output is about 3.2 million tons, about 50% of the world's welding material output.

This paper introduces the development trend of China's demand for welding materials in the future, analyzes the current demand situation by region and by industry, and outlines the development trend of welding materials in the future.

1、 Development trend of welding material market demand and current demand situation by region and Industry
1. Market demand will continue to rise

The report of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly points out that one of the main tasks of China's economic construction in the first two decades of the 21st century is to basically realize industrialization. Now our country is in the middle stage of industrialization. The history of 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, when the United States and Japan basically completed industrialization in the 1970s, the consumption of steel and welding materials peaked and then declined steadily.

In the next 10 years, China's consumption of steel and welding materials will continue to grow, but the growth rate will moderate slow down, and focus on product variety adjustment and quality improvement. According to the prediction of relevant experts, China's steel consumption may reach 600-700 million tons in 10 years. Therefore, the demand for corresponding welding materials may reach 4-4.5 million tons.

2. Demand by Region

At present, in China's economic development, there are great regional differences. Table 1 shows the proportion of steel consumption by Region in recent years. Due to the lack of statistics on welding materials, the data shown in Table 1 can also be indirectly regarded as the demand status of welding materials by region.

3. Demand by industry

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

2、 Main development trend of welding materials

1. The development of welding automation promotes the adjustment of the variety and structure of welding materials

In the mid-1980s, about 50% of welding materials were covered by electrodes in developed countries. By 2004, in Europe, North America (the United States and Canada) and Japan, the proportion of welding rods in the consumption of welding materials had been less than 20%. See Table 2, that is to say, at present, the automatic and semi-automatic welding in developed countries has accounted for more than 80% of the total welding workload.

2. The progress of iron and steel technology promotes the renewal of welding material varieties and the improvement of quality

China is striving to develop from a big steel country to a powerful steel country. In recent years, a large number of upgraded and high-performance high-quality steels have been launched, especially the production equipment and technical level of the steel industry has made great progress. For example, more than ten sets of medium and heavy plate mills will be put into operation in succession, whose performance will surpass the existing mills in Japan and the United States, and become a new generation of modern medium and heavy plate mills in the world Plate mill, for the realization of controlled rolling and cooling (TMCP) process, the production of large quantities, high-performance plate, laid the equipment foundation.

3. The market orientation of high quality and high price should be advocated for common welding materials with large quantity and wide range

At present, the common welding materials with the largest production and consumption in China, including carbon steel welding rod such as jie422, 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 common welding materials in China are only 50% to 60% of the prices of the same kind of high-quality welding materials in the international market, and some welding materials enterprises have adopted "low cost, low quality In recent years, many domestic users have reported that the quality of some common welding materials, such as 422 electrode, has not improved, but has declined.

The foreign market reflects that the common welding materials exported by some enterprises in our country are "low-quality water products". Although the price is cheap, the quality is not good, and they can only be used in secondary projects, which has a bad impact on the "image of welding materials" in our country.