The industrial chain opportunity behind a ski resort: the Winter Olympics have pushed the ice and snow industry into the fast lane

With the Winter Olympics officially entering "Beijing time", the thermal effect brought by the ice and snow industry is gradually emerging. In the Winter Olympic Games, the snowmobile, ice knife, speed skating suit and other ice and snow sports equipment independently developed by the mainland, as well as snow wax cars, snow machines, snow presses and other ice and snow equipment have gradually entered the world stage. Industry insiders said that the "ice and snow boom" has provided strong support for the development of the mainland ice and snow equipment industry, of which the ice and snow equipment industry is expected to become a new economic growth point.

The Winter Olympic dividend activates the ice and snow equipment industry

The Winter Olympics are underway, and the wonderful events have feasted on the eyes of the audience. In fact, ice and snow sports are not only a competition for the speed and strength of athletes, but also a test of sports equipment and competition venue conditions.

"The mainland ice and snow sports started late, which can be said to be the largest primary market in the ice and snow industry." An industry insider said that in the past, the mainland ice and snow sports market was small, and companies rarely paid attention to this track. Ice and snow facilities, equipment, especially in the ice and snow infrastructure and other aspects of the industrial development backward, there are low market share, less well-known brands and other issues. For example, ropeways and palanquins in snow fields, the mainland was in a blank space in this regard for a long time.

The ice and snow industry chain is long and has great development potential. The above-mentioned industry insiders said that with the successful bid for the Winter Olympics, more and more domestic enterprises will focus on the ice and snow industry, and the equipment used in several large ski resorts newly built this year has begun to be localized. "In the past, the maintenance cost of the snow field was extremely high, many small accessories had to be imported, and the repair had to be done from outside, which cost a lot of time and money."

At present, this situation has changed considerably. Yang Ling, deputy general manager of CCID Consulting Intelligent Equipment Industry Research Center, said that according to incomplete statistics, the number of new patents for ice and snow equipment in the mainland from 2016 to 2020 exceeded more than 2,300, more than the sum of the number of new patents added between 2005 and 2015, the proportion of ice and snow equipment patents reached 74.5%, the proportion of utility model patents in patent types was the highest, reaching 68.6%, the proportion of design patents reached 22.5%, and the proportion of authorized invention patents was the smallest, about 8.9%.

In terms of enterprises, Yang Ling introduced that a number of backbone enterprises of ice and snow equipment such as Black Dragon International, Tianbing Snowmaking, Xuangong Machinery, Del Refrigeration and Iceberg Cold and Heat have emerged on the mainland, and have realized independent production in snowmaking machines, snow rollers, ice units and ice knives. In terms of park carriers, according to incomplete statistics, as of 2021, the mainland has more than ten related theme industrial parks, mainly distributed in Heilongjiang, Hebei, Jilin and Liaoning provinces, forming six key parks with certain industrial bases, such as the Beijing-Zhang-Ao-O-Carbin Ice and Snow Industrial Park, the Zhangjiakou High-tech Zone Ice and Snow Sports Equipment Industrial Park, and the Sino-Austrian Ice and Snow Equipment Industrial Park.

From scratch, there are multiple equipment manufacturing "fill in the blanks"

The rapid development of the ice and snow industry has also led to the continuous upgrading of the ice and snow equipment manufacturing industry, and the domestic snowmobile equipment "from scratch" is one of the examples.

"Before that, we didn't even know what a snowmobile looked like, and although we saw some pictures from the Internet, we didn't know much about how to design and how to make it. After receiving the task, it is a great challenge for us to build a product that we have never seen before in a year. Zhou Yu, who is in charge of snowmobile research and development at the Aerospace Materials and Technology Research Institute of the First Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, recalled the scene when he received the mission.

To this end, the Institute of Aerospace Materials and Technology led the establishment of a special working group, under the guidance and support of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Winter Games Center of the State General Administration of Sports, provoked the research and development burden of the "Science and Technology Winter Olympics" special project "Key Technologies for Carbon Fiber Composite Materials High-performance Equipment for Winter Projects".

In the face of many difficulties such as thin foundation, high requirements and tight tasks, researchers have broken through a series of key technologies such as the integrated design of low wind resistance and high reliability of shape structure, high impact carbon/glass hybrid composite materials, and finally completed the design of the first domestic double snowmobile principle prototype, the development of special material system, product development and manufacturing, and realized the domestic snowmobile equipment from "none" to have, filling the domestic gap.

Through the Beijing Winter Olympics, people can see more innovative achievements made in China: the first snow wax car with completely independent intellectual property rights in the mainland was unveiled, breaking the long-term monopoly of foreign countries in the field; the domestic Snow Kirin M2 snow machine broke through a number of core components and key technical bottlenecks of the whole machine intelligence, using 5G intelligent technology to automatically make snow, and the core indicators reached or exceeded the level of similar foreign snowmakers...

"The ice and snow equipment industry is an important part of the ice and snow industry, and its development and prosperity are of great significance to improving the level of ice and snow sports in the mainland and promoting the widespread development of ice and snow sports." The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that with the "300 million people participating in ice and snow sports" gradually becoming a reality, the ice and snow equipment industry is expected to become a new economic growth point.

Accelerate the layout of the ice and snow industry in many ways

The hosting of the Beijing Winter Olympics has prompted the potential of the ice and snow industry to be stimulated as never before. According to the "Legacy Report of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games (2020)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, by the end of 2019, the overall scale of China's ice and snow industry was 423.5 billion yuan, an increase of 56.9% over 270 billion yuan in 2015.

At present, ice and snow sports have become a new outlet for capital pursuit. According to enterprise investigation data, as of January 2022, there are 21,500 existing ice and snow-related enterprises (keywords are skiing, snow, snowmaking, ice and snow) in the mainland, of which 7565 new enterprises will be added from 2020 to 2021. From the perspective of provincial distribution, Heilongjiang ranked first with 5258, and from the perspective of urban distribution, Harbin ranked first with 4361. From the perspective of financing, the financing amount of ice and snow tracks has reached 3.412 billion yuan over the years, and a total of 10 ski-related projects have been financed in 2021, with an amount of more than 300 million yuan.

According to the "China Ice and Snow Tourism Development Report (2022)" released by the China Tourism Research Institute, 157 asset-heavy ice and snow construction projects with large investment scale were completed from 2018 to 2021, with heavy asset projects approaching 1 trillion yuan. In the four years from 2018 to 2021, the investment amount absorbed by the northeast, north China and northwest china accounted for 47.9%, and the investment amount in the southwest, south China, central China and east China accounted for 52.1%. In terms of transportation infrastructure investment projects, the mainland has built a total of 128 ice and snow tourism transportation projects since 2016, including railways, highways, transportation hubs, etc., with a total investment of 2.47 trillion yuan.

The huge development potential also allows many places to increase the overall layout of the ice and snow industry chain. Bai Jianhai, deputy secretary of the Party Working Committee of Zhangjiakou High-tech Zone, told the Economic Reference Daily that the planned total area of the ice and snow sports equipment industrial park built locally is 1743 mu, with a planned total investment of 1.3 billion yuan, which is divided into two major bases: ice and snow equipment manufacturing and ice and snow sports experience. The industrial directions that the industrial park focuses on are divided into three categories, including light equipment industries such as ski helmets, ski glasses, and ski clothes, heavy equipment industries such as snow machines, snow compressors, ropeways, and sports equipment industries.

Up to now, the park has signed 48 ice and snow projects such as Tianbing Ice and Snow Equipment and French MND, with a planned total investment of 4.529 billion yuan, and has completed the registration of 43 companies such as Amity and Tianbing Ice and Snow. (Reporter Liang Qian, Guo Qian)

Source: Economic Reference Newspaper