Mold refers to various molds and tools used to produce products by injection molding, die casting or forging in industrial production. The mold is the basic process equipment for industrial production and is called "the mother of industry". According to statistics, 75% of rough-processing industrial parts and 50% of finished parts need to be molded by molds, and most plastic products are also molded by molds.

According to the different materials formed, the mold can be divided into metal molds and non-metal molds, wherein the metal molds mainly include casting molds and stamping molds, and the non-metal molds are mainly plastic molds. Plastic molds and stamping molds are the main mold types. The market scale in 2010 reached 63 billion and 52 billion respectively, accounting for 45% and 37% of the mold industry respectively. Plastic molds are mainly used for the compression molding of plastic products. Stamping molds are mainly used for cold stamping molding of metal materials.

The rapid growth of the industry has continued to expand since 2000. Thanks to the rapid development of the downstream automotive, electronics, and plastics industries, the mold industry in China has achieved considerable development. The industry revenue of the mold industry grew rapidly from 14 billion yuan in 2003 to 140 billion yuan in 2010, an increase of 10 times in eight years, and the average annual growth rate was above 28%. The financial crisis only slowed down the growth rate of the industry to 12.5%, which is still far higher than the growth rate of GDP. It can be seen that the development momentum of China's mold industry is very strong.

In general, mold makers need to customize the material used for the mold—die steel—according to the customer's needs, then purchase the appropriate mold standard parts to build the mold frame, and finally design the mold core to form the mold. Therefore, the industry chain of the mold industry mainly includes three sub-sectors: mold steel (raw materials), mold frame (standard parts) and mold (finished products).

Die steel imports have a promising future. Die steel refers to the type of steel used to make the mold. It is the mold base and the raw material for mold making. It directly affects the service life and molding quality of the mold. In 2010, China's mold steel consumption reached 12.9 billion US dollars, an increase of 20% over 2009. For five consecutive years, China has become the world's largest consumer of mold steel, accounting for 21% of global consumption. At the same time, the domestic output value of mold steel was only US$7 billion. Although it is already the third largest mold steel producer in the world, the gap between supply and demand reached 5.9 billion. The US dollar has an import dependency of as high as 46%, and almost all of the materials for high-grade molds and export molds are imported. With the domestic enterprises gradually mastering the production technology of die steel, the development prospects of the domestic die steel industry are promising. In 2010, the industry growth rate reached 37%.

Standard parts coverage increases the demand for drive formwork. The formwork is the support of the mold and is the standard part of the mold design. For a typical mold, many of the structures are the same except for the molding portion of each mold. The use of mold bases and mold standard parts can shorten the mold production time by 25%-40%, and save 25% of the mold processing man-hours. The time saving for mold manufacturers is considerable, so the mold design manufacturers generally use standard mold bases to do Mold.

At present, the application of mold standard parts in China is still relatively backward, the coverage rate is estimated to be only about 45%, while the coverage rate in foreign mature markets can reach more than 70%. The increase in the coverage of standard parts plus the increase in mold demand will drive the demand for formwork.

The export of domestic molds is the last link in the industry chain of the mold industry, and it is also the most direct link with the downstream industry. Benefiting from the increase in downstream demand, China's mold industry revenue reached 140 billion yuan in 2010, a year-on-year increase of 28%. In addition, in 2010, China imported about 2 billion US dollars in the mold, these molds are almost all large-scale, sophisticated, complex, long life as the main representative of the high-tech mold, this part of the mold dependence on the foreign more than 40%. It can be seen that the amount of molds imported over the past five years is very stable, indicating that the demand for high-tech molds in China is very rigid. At the same time, with the increase in the competitiveness of China's mold production, China's mold exports accelerated. In 1999, the export scale was only 130 million US dollars, in 2010 reached 2.2 billion US dollars, with an average compound annual growth rate of 29%.

In 2010, China’s mold industry achieved a surplus of US$130 million for the first time. It is expected that the growth rate of exports will continue to be higher than the growth rate of imports over a period of time, and the surplus will continue to expand.

Broad downstream support mold needs, product competition to mold the consumer goods. As the upper part of the production of standard parts and components, the mold has properties similar to those of capital goods. The one-time purchase can support long-term use. Therefore, the mold industry has a large production value amplification effect, and the ratio of the production value of the mold industry and the downstream parts industry can reach the level of 1:100. The role of the mold in the production process is very critical, for example, a model of the car needs more than 4,000 sets of molds, 300 sets of large-scale cover molds; single refrigerator needs 350 molds to pay, worth 4 million yuan; a single washing machine to mold parts 500 Requires 200 to pay the mold, worth 20 million yuan -30 million; there are notebook computers, communications equipment, building materials in the drain, plastic doors and windows, instrumentation and other industries need a lot of mold support. In order to implement mass production in an industry, it is necessary to rely on molds. Therefore, molds have broad downstream industry support and demand is very large.

At the same time, the competition in the downstream industry is becoming more and more fierce, and the product replacement is becoming faster and faster. This has directly led to the consumerization of the mold industry: the life cycle of the mold will be greatly shortened, and the mold is more like a consumer product. The replacement frequency is getting more and more high. Therefore, we believe that the mold industry will take advantage of the fierce competition from the downstream industry and achieve sustained, steady and rapid growth.

Short-term gross profit margin is still on the up channel Because the mold is a customized fine product, the gross margin of the mold industry is generally better than the downstream industry. In 2004-2007, the average gross profit level of the mold industry was close to 20%, while the average gross profit margin of downstream auto parts, auto vehicle manufacturing, and household appliance industries was only 15%. After the financial crisis, the gross profit rate of vehicle manufacturers increased rapidly, but the profit rate of the mold industry remained below the historical average.

At present, the domestic mold steel prices have remained stable, and steel prices have been at a low level since 2007. At the same time, the investment in the downstream household appliances, automotive and electronics industries is booming. The automotive industry has a large-scale fixed-asset investment since 2009. The general construction period is about 18 months, and it is still in the capacity-releasing period. In 2011, mold demand will be supported. Therefore, we expect that the gross margin of the mold industry is still in the upward range.

China's mold industry is obviously regional, among which the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta regions are the most concentrated mold production areas in China.

Guangdong is the most important market for China's mold industry, and it is also China's largest mold export and import province, with output value accounting for more than 40% of the country. As electronics, toys and other industries are well developed, the demand for molds is very strong. Guangdong has a complete mold industry industry chain, mold processing equipment, the rate of NC and equipment performance, mold processing technology, production of professional standards and standards leading domestic other provinces and cities. The Yangtze River Delta region is also another focus of China's mold market, accounting for about 40% of China's mold market. Among them, Zhejiang Province has the largest scale, accounting for more than 70% of the mold production in the Yangtze River Delta Region, mainly in Ningbo City and Taizhou City.

The agglomeration of the mold industry is mainly caused by the accumulation of upstream and downstream industries. The concentration of mold production can shorten the cycle of mold supply and conform to the trend of fast-paced production. Therefore, when selecting companies in the mold industry, it is necessary to pay special attention to whether the geographical location of the company is too far from the final user group. The ideal situation is to choose the leading company in a certain area.

The main line of the three main lines of investment in the mold industry is: a large gap between the supply and demand of die steel, the selection of advanced technology and the rapid expansion of the company. China is the country with the largest consumption of global mold steel. The market is very broad, and the outlook for future industry development is optimistic. However, at this stage, the supply and demand gap of China's die steel is huge, and the foreign dependence is as high as 46%. A large number of high-quality die steels need to be imported from Japan, Germany, and Sweden. The reason is that the tool steel only accounts for 20% of the cost of the mold, and the mold processing cost is very expensive (more than 60% of the total cost). If the inferior mold steel is selected, the life and molding quality of the mold will be greatly affected. influences. For example, the domestic die casting H13 steel die has a life of 30,000-50,000, while the imported high-quality H13 steel die casting die can reach 200,000 lives, and the corresponding final product output can be increased by 4 to 6 times. The gap in mold life makes domestic mold manufacturers prefer to purchase high-quality mold steel from foreign countries rather than using domestic materials.

However, domestically produced die steel has the advantage that foreign steel plants can't match. The first is the advantage of delivery time. The second is the cost advantage. For products of the same specifications, domestic mold steel prices are only 1/5 to 1/3 of that of foreign countries. In recent years, China's mold steel production process and technology have made great progress, so we believe that with the further development of technology, domestic steel products can replace imported molds. The proposal focuses on making breakthroughs in technology, and there will be companies with major scale expansion in the near future.

Main line 2: Mold bases are standardized products and companies with scale advantages are selected. At present, the use of mold standard parts in China is still lagging far behind the developed countries. The shortening of the mold production cycle requires increasing the coverage of mold standard parts. We believe that as the competition in the mold industry intensifies, the use of mold frames will become more widespread, and the mold life cycle will become shorter, and the demand for mold frames will increase.

Since the formwork is a standardized product, we recommend focusing on companies with scale advantages. In addition, due to the typical regional agglomeration of mold production, the location of the company's factory building should be close to the downstream users, and it is optimistic about the companies with good location and new plant production in the future.

Main line 3: Magnification effect of mold output value is significant, focusing on integrated production of mold and parts production. The mold industry generally adopts a single-piece customization model, which can be customized according to samples or design drawings provided by customers. Therefore, it has the characteristics of single-piece and multi-batch. However, due to the significant production value amplification effect of the mold production, the market scale of the downstream parts of the mold is far greater than the value of the mold itself. As for the production of parts, the core part is the mold, so the mold manufacturers have the inherent potential to expand downstream. The ideal situation is to be able to open up the production of molds and downstream components, so that both the ability to fully use the mold design and the larger downstream market can be enjoyed.

The tightening policy was stricter than expected, resulting in a significant slowdown in the growth rate of investment in fixed assets in the manufacturing industry; due to the earthquake in Japan, the supply of spare parts for electronics and automotive industries was insufficient, resulting in a slowdown in the industry and cooling of new mold demand.

We believe that the trend of mold consumerization will drive the development of the entire mold industry, and mold steel, mold bases, and mold production in the industry chain will all benefit. There will be three important changes in the mold industry: First, the market size of the entire mold industry will increase, the demand for upstream mold steel will accelerate; Second, the coverage of mold standard parts will increase, and the demand for mold products will increase. The third mold development ability, mold delivery companies with short delivery times will gain competitive advantage.