Five years to eliminate the upgrading problem of the incandescent lamp industry

After five years you may no longer be able to buy ordinary light bulbs. The Chinese government has officially released a roadmap for phase-out of incandescent lamps. It plans to basically stop its use in China for five years.

While publishing the roadmap to phase out incandescent lamps, the National Development and Reform Commission also announced the first batch of sub-contractual bid winners for incandescent lamp production companies, including Guangdong Benbang Electric Co., Ltd. and other three companies. However, for some professional incandescent lamp manufacturers, they have to face the strategic transformation of the company. “We are also considering the transformation of energy-saving lamps or other products, but they are all ideas that have not yet been finalized,” said the head of Shuangyi Lighting.

The industry expects that the market for 1 billion incandescent lamps will be completely divided by energy-saving lamps and even LED lights after five years, and a market space of at least 8 billion yuan will be added. However, Xu Huai, secretary-general of the China Lighting Institute, said that LED lights are still new and current sales prices are high, so it is difficult to completely replace incandescent lamps when they are not widely used.

Small and medium enterprises face difficult transition

"The elimination of incandescent lamps is the trend of the times. This is something we all look at. We will not let nature be sold in the future." The person in charge of Shenyang Shuangyi Lighting Appliance Co., Ltd. told Netease Finance. Shuangyi Lighting is a relatively large professional incandescent lamp manufacturer in Northeast China. Its annual output is about 100 million, of which 70% are domestic sales.

It may be that the relevant departments and associations have already done a lot of casualties before this time. The introduction of this new policy has not caused a big wave in the industry, or that various companies have already expected. Shi Yongjun, director of NVC Lighting Brand Center and spokesman, said that in July last year, the company put forward the first incandescent lamp business in the industry, which is the direction of future industry development.

According to the “Notice on Gradually Prohibiting the Import and Sales of Incandescent Lamps for General Lighting” (hereinafter referred to as the “Announcement”) announced by the China National Development and Reform Commission and other five departments jointly in early November, from October 1, 2012, the power will be gradually divided by stages. It is forbidden to import and sell incandescent lamps for general lighting, and will basically stop using them after 2016.

While publishing the roadmap to phase out incandescent lamps, the National Development and Reform Commission also announced the first batch of sub-contractual bids for incandescent lamp production companies, including Guangdong Benbang Electric Appliance Co., Ltd., Shandong Huatai Light Source Co., Ltd., and Nan Pia Ming Light Bulb Manufacturing Co., Ltd. Responsible company Three companies are short-listed.

How these companies plan their own transformation strategy, in this process, government departments should have funds or technical support, Shandong Huatai Lighting Co., Ltd. Song Deji unwilling to reveal more information to NetEase. The company’s people also said that the elimination of incandescent bulbs currently does not appear to have a significant impact on the company. The company annually produces 120 million light bulbs of various kinds, while the incandescent light bulbs mainly come from overseas, and the proportion of sales and sales in the domestic market It is still very small, so it is very limited by this policy.

However, not all small and medium enterprises are so lucky. According to the figures provided by the China Lighting Association, the output value of the domestic lighting industry is between 180 billion yuan and 200 billion yuan each year, and there are more than 10,000 production companies. Most of them will face transformation challenges in the future. Such as Shuangyi Lighting, the company is still a lot, "We are also considering the transformation of energy-saving lamps or other products, but are all ideas, have not yet settled," Shuangyi Lighting said.

For incandescent lamp production companies that need to transform, if they want to start producing energy-saving lamps, on the one hand, fierce market competition and decreasing sales prices, on the other hand, the increase in rare earth prices in the past two years has boosted the rise in costs. It can be said that The cost of transition will increase a lot.

8 billion market space mining "difficult"

According to the information provided by relevant departments, many countries in the world have come up with a timetable for the elimination of incandescent lamps. Cuba and Australia were among the first countries to ban the sale and production of incandescent lamps. Now countries including Europe, the United States and Japan have announced plans to phase out incandescent lamps.

It is understood that the elimination of incandescent lamps also brings a lot of room for growth in this industry. According to official figures, China is a major producer and consumer of incandescent lamps. In 2010, the output of incandescent lamps and domestic sales were respectively 3.85 billion and 1.07 billion. By eliminating incandescent lamps, the output value of the newly added lighting appliances industry is expected to be about 8 billion yuan.

Although the manufacturers of energy-saving lamps and LED lamps are seizing the opportunity to replace incandescent lamps, the voices in the industry are not uniform around the announced elimination policies. Wang Xiaoying, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing Lighting Association, told NetEase that the company should phase out incandescent lamps from the aspect of energy conservation. However, the current policy completely avoids the pollution hazards of energy-saving lamps and LED lamps and is not comprehensive enough.

Xu Huai, secretary-general of the China Society of Illumination, hopes that the outside world should not exaggerate the pollution problem of energy-saving lamps. He said that the current energy-saving lamp market is promoting low-mercury technologies and it can be said that the hazards have been controlled to be relatively satisfactory. In addition to the recovery mechanism, Xu Huai believes that this is indeed a difficult problem and that it is not solved in a global context.

From a demand perspective, the biggest obstacle to replacing incandescent lamps with energy-saving lamps is price. Compared to incandescent lamps, which cost about one or two yuan each, the price of energy-saving lamps is generally several times higher, and the price of LED lamps is tens of yuan more, which far exceeds the consumption level in rural areas. This is also the biggest difficulty in China's plan to phase out incandescent lamps.

Xu Huai said that LED lights are still new, and the current sales price is also high, so it is difficult to completely replace incandescent lamps when they are not widely used.

Shi Yongjun, a spokesman for NVC Lighting, believes that the market is still dominated by energy-saving lamps, especially in the home market. In the commercial sector, with the support of policies, LED lamps and energy-saving lamps are expected to be evenly divided.

The confusion of lighting appliances

Energy-saving lamps are eyeing the market after the incandescent lamp has exited, and LED-lighting, the new industry darling, is rapidly growing up. Thus, like the polysilicon and photovoltaic industries, the capital input of these two industries has begun to repeat the old road of many industries with excess capacity in China.

LED light source technology is listed as a national "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" strategic emerging industry. In recent years, a flood of investment in the LED industry is rushing across the country. As a province of Guangdong alone, the number of LED companies is close to 3,000, and the output value and scale continue to rank first in the country. The output value is 85.3 billion yuan, and the output value and output account for about 70% of the country.

A large amount of investment has caused the overcapacity in the industry. According to wind statistics, the stock prices of 34 LED listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets fell across the board in the first three quarters of this year, with an overall drop of 29.35%. Guoxing Optoelectronics, Shandong Precision The cumulative decline of 10 companies during this period even exceeded 40%.

In addition, many domestic LED lamp manufacturing enterprises are basically concentrated in the downstream areas, core chip technology and phosphor technology are still in the hands of foreign companies, which is equivalent to another industry that has been caught in the neck. For energy-saving lamps, official data show that in 2010, China’s total energy-saving lamp production was 4.26 billion, accounting for about 80% of global production. Perhaps because the domestic technology is relatively mature and the investment threshold is low, NetEase has not been able to find a specific number of production companies, and thousands of vague explanations indicate the confusion in this industry.

Due to the uneven quality of market participants, most SMEs lack core technologies, have weak brand awareness, and are dominated by OEMs. They lack long-term development impetus and restrict the development of the industry. Industry experts also pointed out that energy-saving lamp manufacturing companies have been mixed, and the price war has been scattered, the industry has been in a state of disorderly development. The current surge in rare earth prices has just provided the industry with an opportunity for survival of the fittest and accelerated integration.

Shi Yongjun believes that the competitiveness of the industry is improving, and the company’s scale and product quality all have higher requirements. Therefore, small companies will be more difficult to do in the future, and large-scale enterprises will also use actual acquisitions and mergers to strengthen themselves. Industry integration is inevitable.