Abstract: As the most basic and most versatile mechanical basic parts, the fastener industry plays a pivotal role in the country's new strategic emerging industries, since the reform and opening up, the mainland fastener industry has completed the transformation from small to large after decades of development, and has become a major global fastener production and exporter. At the same time, with the rapid development of the mainland economy, the scale of the downstream fields of automobiles, machinery, rail transit, energy and power industries has expanded rapidly, and the demand for fasteners has continued to grow, which has led to the development of the mainland fastener industry. According to the data, the market size of the mainland fastener industry in 2022 will be about 116.514 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.3%.
1. Definitions and Classification
Fastener is a general term for a type of mechanical parts used to fasten two or more parts (or components) to form a whole. It is characterized by a wide variety of specifications, different performance and use, and the degree of standardization, serialization and generalization is also extremely high, and it is widely used in various machinery, equipment, vehicles, ships, railways, bridges, buildings, structures, tools, instruments, meters and other fields. At present, fasteners on the market mainly include bolts, studs, screws, nuts, self-tapping screws, wood screws, washers, retaining rings, (plug) pins, rivets, assemblies and connecting pairs and welding nails 12 categories.
Second, industry policies
In recent years, the National People's Congress and the National Development and Reform Commission have successively issued the "Standardization Law of the People's Republic of China", "Product Quality Law of the People's Republic of China", "National Standardization Development Outline" and other legal documents and policies to encourage enterprises to strengthen the standardization of basic parts and components, pay attention to product quality, and improve the industry access threshold. The National Development and Reform Commission has also issued policy documents such as the "Catalogue for the Guidance of Industrial Structure Adjustment (2019)" and the "Catalogue of Encouraged Industries for Foreign Investment (2020 Edition)" to encourage the development of the fastener industry in the direction of high precision and high strength, further improving the industry access threshold and easing industry competition. National laws and regulations and industry development policies have effectively promoted the centralized development of the fastener industry and created a good policy and institutional environment for the development of the industry.
3. Industry barriers
1. Financial barriers
The fastener manufacturing industry is an industry with a large scale of capital investment. First of all, the production line of fasteners has a large investment in the early stage, and it is necessary to carry out large-scale construction of land, factories and warehouses, and purchase large-scale production equipment such as large quantities of cold heading machines and CNC machine tools to form scale advantages. Secondly, in the process of production and operation, due to the frequent fluctuations in raw material prices and the concentration of suppliers, enterprises in the upstream steel mill procurement, in order to ensure the on-time supply of raw materials, reduce procurement costs, usually use the settlement method of payment to delivery, and usually have a certain account period when selling downstream, resulting in fastener manufacturers need to pay more working capital. Therefore, the high investment in fixed assets and working capital poses a certain obstacle to the entry of small and medium-sized enterprises with limited funds and weak financing ability into the industry.
2. Technical barriers
There are certain technical barriers to fasteners in the production process and production management. First of all, the production of fasteners involves many fields such as material science, surface treatment, machining, automation, etc., and the products involve many materials and standards, and the required process parameters and technical indicators are different, which puts forward different requirements for the optimal design of molding and machining processes. At the same time, with the industrial upgrading of downstream industry application fields, customers have more stringent requirements for product performance, dimensions, finish, and processing accuracy. Therefore, the production of fasteners requires enterprises to accumulate a lot of manufacturing experience, process know-how and technical reserves after long-term research and practice, and it is difficult for new enterprises to fully grasp the core technology required by the industry in the short term, and cannot produce products with stable quality, excellent performance and cost advantages, so as to face high technical barriers. Secondly, fastener products are diverse, there are many specifications, in large-scale production, the need for procurement, production plan organization and implementation coordination, to achieve information management, in order to achieve high efficiency, low cost, high quality production. The formation of efficient production management capabilities requires a long period of system improvement, experience accumulation and continuous investment in information system construction, which cannot be achieved in a short period of time, thus becoming an entry barrier for industry entrants.
3. Talent barriers
With the rapid development of downstream industries, customer needs are increasingly diversified and highly standardized, which puts forward higher requirements for the research and development capabilities of technical personnel. In addition, in the production of fasteners, the innovative application of production technology, the control of process parameters and the skilled fine operation also require enterprises to have a group of experienced skilled workers. High-quality, high-stability technical personnel and skilled workers, need enterprises to go through long-term practice and training, new enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, it is usually difficult to obtain experienced professional and technical personnel in a short period of time and train a large number of mature skilled workers, so they will face the problem of low production efficiency and high production costs.
4. Market barriers
The construction of marketing channels plays an important role in the market development of fastener enterprises, especially for the export market, the market reputation brought by high-quality and well-known customer groups is an important basis for the expansion of overseas markets, and a good and stable customer relationship is based on field visits, years of cooperation and long-term trust cultivation. Therefore, the development, construction and maintenance of marketing channels require long-term efforts from enterprises, and new entrants in the industry need to spend higher capital and time costs in the development and cooperation process of traders if they do not have channel construction experience in related industries. At the same time, as the world's large-scale fastener manufacturers gradually complete the construction of trade networks and marketing channels, new entrants in the industry face higher market barriers.
Fourth, the industrial chain
The upstream of the fastener industry is mainly for all kinds of steel, aluminum, copper and other production enterprises. At present, there are many manufacturers of steel, aluminum, copper and other products in mainland China, and the production capacity is sufficient. Fastener products are widely used in various fields of industry, including automotive industry, construction industry, power industry, railway, etc. As an important downstream application field of fasteners, the automotive industry will become an important support for the development of the fastener industry.
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