The state has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the material industry, but why does the material industry play a role?

The new material industry covers a wide range, including rare earth, magnetic materials, diamond materials, new energy materials, special ceramic materials, optoelectronics, information materials, intelligent materials, biomedical materials and so on. Except for a few, these industries have resource monopoly. Most of them are competitive industries. Although the competition is fierce, due to the high technical content of these industries, the added value of products is great. Therefore, the profitability of most enterprises is relatively high. The development trend of new materials industry in China China has become a big country in the production and consumption of new materials. The output of basic materials such as steel, important nonferrous metals, main building materials and synthetic fibers ranks first in the world. The industrial added value of all industrial materials is about14.964 billion yuan, accounting for about 14.6% of China's GDP. Wang Qi 'an, director of the Materials Division of the High-tech Development and Industrialization Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, pointed out that there are still many problems in China's new materials industry, such as high consumption of resources and energy in the production process, a big gap between the development of high-performance materials and their varieties and the world's advanced level, advanced preparation and processing technology, characterization and application of material properties, few varieties with independent intellectual property rights, and most key materials with high technical content and high added value rely on imports. Therefore, the development of China's new material industry needs to be accelerated. 1. The modernization of national defense and military industry will greatly promote the demand for new materials. In the past, new materials were mainly used in military industry, aerospace, aviation and other fields because of their excellent performance and high price (see table 1). With the requirements of China's national defense modernization, the absolute value of national military expenditure is increasing, and the proportion of national military expenditure in GDP is also increasing. We expect that under this background, new materials will surely usher in better development opportunities. 2. Domestic consumption growth stimulates the development of new chemical materials. With the technological breakthrough of new chemical materials, large-scale production has led to a significant reduction in costs, and the price has been accepted by civilian products. In addition, new chemical materials have excellent properties such as high temperature resistance, low temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, aging resistance, high strength and friction resistance, and have been widely used in electronics, automobiles, building materials and other fields. The rapid economic development in China has driven the demand for consumer goods such as electronics and automobiles, and the demand growth of these downstream consumer goods has also driven the development of new materials industry in China. At present, the demand growth of some new materials is several times that of China's GDP. 3. The independent innovation ability of domestic leading enterprises has improved, and the import substitution trend is obvious. In the development of new materials industry, it is inevitable that the market price of products will fluctuate greatly. Generally speaking, domestic chemical new material products have gone through the process of foreign technology blockade, market monopoly, high price and high gross profit, independent research and development, device completion, foreign protection, anti-dumping, cooperation, market stability and reasonable price. After several years of development, China's new material industry has begun to take shape and has strong international competitiveness in a few fields. Through continuous research and innovation, domestic leading enterprises have formed processes and technologies with independent intellectual property rights, gradually gaining advantages in cost and scale, and the trend of import substitution is obvious. Before the first set of industrial equipment was built in China, typical products, such as silicone products, were blocked and priced by foreign competitors. When the price of intermediate products in silicone was the highest, 1999 exceeded 40,000 yuan/ton. After the domestic installation was completed, foreign competitors adopted dumping strategy, and the lowest price in 2003 was less than 15000 yuan/ton. With the support of relevant state departments, through anti-dumping investigation and arbitration, the current price is maintained at a reasonable price of 20,000 yuan/ton. It is precisely because of the buffer of policy protection and the continuous absorption and innovation of domestic enterprises that silicone industry in China has developed rapidly, approaching the advanced level in the world. In addition, various high-performance reinforced materials developed in China are gradually replacing imported products, and a number of distinctive high-performance resins have been successfully developed. A new generation of resin-based, metal-based and ceramic-based composites is under development; In the exploration of new high-critical temperature superconducting materials, the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity, the relationship between copper oxide superconducting materials and crystal structure, the practical technology of superconducting copper oxide materials, the research on material science integration related to thin film technology, and the research on high-critical temperature superconductivity have always maintained or approached the forefront of the world. China has successfully built an amorphous strip coil with an annual output of 100 tons; Developed multi-element alloys and multi-purpose new materials; It can draw large-diameter silicon single crystals with a diameter of 300 mm (one or two inches) and a weight of up to one kilogram. A breakthrough has been made in the research of ceramic materials. The research and application of high-temperature structural ceramic materials have a certain position in the world, and low-temperature ceramic materials have also formed their own characteristics. The industrialization of polymer materials has also made great progress in recent years; A new type of hydrogen storage material developed by using rare earth resources has been successfully applied to the manufacture of nickel-hydrogen batteries under laboratory conditions. Characteristics and investment opportunities of enterprises in new materials industry (I) Overall characteristics of enterprises in new materials industry Generally speaking, the asset quality of new materials enterprises in China is relatively good. The overall profitability of the industry is strong. From the perspective of market structure, the industrial chain of new materials is becoming more and more perfect, the industrial cluster effect is obvious, the market demand is strong, and the supply capacity of enterprises is enhanced; From the perspective of enterprise behavior, new materials enterprises have frequent mergers and acquisitions, continuous technological breakthroughs, diversified competitive means and further broadened sales channels. In many new materials companies, although each industry has its own problems, there are also some * * * problems, mainly in: 1. High dependence on foreign countries. After several years of development, China's chemical new material industry has begun to take shape. But also has strong international competitiveness in some fields. However, compared with advanced countries, we still have some shortcomings, such as insufficient production capacity, poor product quality, few product specifications and no serialization. Therefore, many important products and high-performance products still need to be imported. Generally speaking, the greater the technical difficulty, the greater the capacity gap and the greater the dependence on foreign countries, such as silicone industry and carbon fiber industry. 2. High technical barriers The technical barriers of new chemical materials are generally high. At present, China mainly relies on importing related products or digesting and absorbing innovative imported technologies. For example, MDI industry has obvious "oligopoly" nature. At present, there are only eight companies in the world that really master the core technology of MDI, all of which are internationally renowned chemical enterprises such as BASF and Bayer, and only yantai wanhua (Lu 00309) has mastered this technology in China. 3. The average main business income of several new materials enterprises is about 555 million yuan. The average net profit is about 640,000 yuan. Compared with enterprises in other industries, the average operating scale of new materials enterprises is still small, and enterprises need to continue to expand their scale to obtain economies of scale and enhance their competitiveness. At present, small and medium-sized enterprises producing low-end products account for the majority of domestic new material enterprises, and few leading enterprises can participate in international competition. 4. There is a certain degree of vicious competition. Because of the existence of many mixed small enterprises, the profit of new materials products in China is not only low, but also there are uncontrolled price cuts and vicious competition among domestic enterprises. It is also a kind of material, and many companies started overnight. Each manufacturer has mastered certain technologies or purchased certain achievements. Enterprises are all in the growth stage, repeating at one level. Slow development does not promote mutual complementarity, disorderly competition, competitive price reduction, killing each other, resulting in a great waste of resources. (2) Investment opportunities of new materials industries and enterprises 1. National policies have been vigorously promoted. In order to develop the new material industry, the state gives strong support in policy. Up to now, the country has successively passed the special project of high-tech industrialization of new materials, the national key scientific and technological plan, the torch plan, the Balu 3 plan, the Jiutu 3 plan and the National Natural Science Foundation; Seven projects, including SME Innovation Fund, strongly supported the development of new materials industry. At the same time, the state has also increased its financial support for tackling key scientific and technological problems in the new materials industry, with an annual investment of more than 500 million yuan. Zhang, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at the Boao International Forum on New Chemical Materials in 2000 that it is necessary to strengthen macro guidance and policy support, and to recognize, attach importance to and give priority to the development of new materials industry from the height of development strategy. Zhang stressed that although China's new materials industry has made great progress, compared with developed countries, the overall level of new materials still has a big gap. The macro guidance and policy guidance of the state will play an important guiding role in the research and development, industrialization and large-scale production of new materials. It is necessary to establish an innovation and industrialization mechanism that closely combines market and demand, strengthen the internal innovation ability of new material industrialization, encourage the use of social resources to carry out innovation activities, optimize resource allocation, break through the technical bottleneck of new material engineering and industrialization, establish the development goal of material science, attach importance to the formation of core industrialization and industrial chain, realize the matching of related industries in the upper, middle and lower reaches, and realize large-scale industrialization. These measures have had a great impact on promoting and accelerating the development of new materials industry in China. China's new material industry has thus entered a period of rapid development. 2. Downstream demand drives investment value. From the perspective of industry development, China's chemical new materials industry is generally on the rise. On the one hand, due to the high technical barriers and strong bargaining power of chemical new materials, it is still in the sunrise stage of rapid development of the industry, and it is also the object encouraged and supported by national policies, and the development momentum is good as a whole. Due to the deep processing degree of products, raw materials account for a relatively small proportion in the cost of fine chemical products, and the profitability of this sub-industry is relatively less affected by the fluctuation of raw material prices, while factors such as process level and marketing strategy are more important. The core competitiveness of enterprises is often reflected in R&D strength, management level and development strategy. On the other hand, the downstream industries of the new material industry are mainly automobiles, aviation equipment, communication equipment, household appliances, IT industry and other electronic information industries, and the above industries are currently in a period of rapid development, which is bound to increase the demand for new materials and provide a market foundation for the long-term rapid development of the new material industry. For example, due to the high demand growth in the building energy-saving market in 2000 (the country began to enforce the 5% standard of building energy-saving land in six eastern coastal cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Dalian, Qingdao, Shanghai and Shenzhen on the first day of 2000), MDI in polyurethane increased greatly. 3. The emergence of revolutionary new materials has changed the industrial development path. Generally speaking, after revolutionary new materials are developed and commercialized, they often bring about sudden changes in related industries. For example, with the commercialization of domestic SiC chips, the problem of basic raw materials that have plagued the development of third-generation semiconductors in China has been solved, the production cost of high-quality LEDs and semiconductor devices will be greatly reduced, the bottleneck of raw materials controlled by foreign manufacturers will be fundamentally reversed, and related industrial clusters will flourish. Therefore, the localization process of C chip will change the development path of semiconductor industry. (3) Investment risk of new materials enterprises New materials have gradually become a hot spot in the market, but having policies and a market does not mean that the company will definitely get high profits. At present, enterprises investing in new materials need to pay attention to the following aspects: first, the supply of raw materials. Most new materials are raw materials. Because raw materials are far away from finished products, the ability of price negotiation is weak, especially for enterprises lacking technical and resource advantages, the profit and sustainable development ability are greatly restricted. If the supply of raw materials cannot be effectively solved, the products will become passive water and trees without roots. Taking optical fiber preform as an example, the domestic optical fiber quality has reached the international first-class level, but 0%-90% of the core material of optical fiber preform depends on imports, which affects the profitability of products to a considerable extent. Therefore, when investing in new material projects, we must first consider the implementation of raw materials. The second is that the technical equipment of enterprises is backward. The overall technical level of China's new material industry is not high, with too many primary products, unstable intermediate products and lack of advanced products, which is far from meeting the needs of economic development. Except for some backbone enterprises whose technical equipment is close to or reaches the international advanced level, most small and medium-sized enterprises are backward in technical equipment, which leads to weak international competitiveness and restricts sustainable development. Third, the domestic Industry-University-Research is out of touch, so it is difficult to industrialize many achievements, and the speed of scientific and technological updating of enterprises is slow. For example, China's research on nano-materials is not backward in the world, but there are many obstacles to industrialization. The real products are mostly primary products, and the profits are not much. The fourth is the low entry threshold. Take NdFeB as an example. Although this material was listed as top grade in the Catalogue of High-tech Products in China in 2000, the entry threshold is not high. The last set of equipment with an annual output of 500 tons only needs to invest about 60 million yuan. In addition, the technical requirements of middle and low-grade products are not high, and the relevant international patents will expire in 2003, which means that many enterprises can enter the international market soon. The above reasons have led to many domestic enterprises investing in this project in recent years, the market competition has intensified, and the product profit rate has been rapidly diluted. Therefore, it is impossible for a project with a relatively low threshold to maintain excess profits for a long time, and it is necessary to be cautious when investing. Fifth, the speed of technology upgrading is fast. Any new material is a new material in a certain period of time, has its life cycle, and cannot be a new material forever. It is also an inevitable trend that a new material will be replaced by a newer one in the future. Taking permanent magnet materials as an example, Al-Ni-Co permanent magnet appeared in the 1940s, ferrite permanent magnet appeared in the 1950s, the first generation of rare earth permanent magnet SmC05 was developed in the 1990s, the second generation of rare earth permanent magnet Sm 2C0 was successfully developed, and the "permanent magnet king" NdFeB material appeared in 1983. Recently, NdFeB and other rare earth permanent magnet materials with high magnetic energy product have appeared. Therefore, it is very important to study whether a new material product will be replaced in about five years and formulate relevant countermeasures.