Abstract:In terms of design and production, Times Hi-Tech adheres to the whole process control, closely cooperates, communicates smoothly, reduces costs, and ensures high quality and high cost performance for users from all aspects of design, processing, assembly and commissioning.
Recently, the "White Paper on the Development of China's Lithium-ion Battery Equipment Industry (2024)" jointly released by the research institute EVTank, Ivey Economic Research Institute and China Battery Industry Research Institute shows that the global lithium-ion battery equipment market size will reach 186.87 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 24.2%, of which the Chinese market size will reach 137.05 billion yuan.
EVTank said that in recent years, the rapid expansion of China's lithium-ion battery production capacity has created a huge market space for lithium-ion battery equipment, and the market size of China's lithium-ion battery equipment has grown from 63.43 billion yuan to 137.05 billion yuan in only 2 years, and a large number of equipment manufacturing enterprises have shared the dividends of industry growth.
Tian Xiaobo, general manager of the marketing department of Times Hi-Tech
"In the face of the need for battery companies to further reduce costs, reducing manufacturing costs by improving production efficiency will become the main theme of the development of the lithium battery equipment industry." Tian Xiaobo, general manager of the marketing department of Shenzhen Times High-tech Equipment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Times Hi-Tech), recently spoke with the battery network.
Founded in 2001, Times Hi-Tech is the world's most advanced vacuum drying equipment provider, covering three major areas: lithium battery baking equipment, intelligent logistics equipment, and high-end automatic cleaning equipment. The company has four bases in Shenzhen, Ganzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin, with a R&D and production area of about 180,000 square meters.
Reduce costs and increase efficiency Provide high-quality solutions
With the continuous upgrading of power battery companies' demand for cell safety, manufacturing process, production efficiency, etc., equipment companies must continue to maintain the driving force of innovation in order to win the right to speak in the competition. According to Tian Xiaobo, Times Hi-Tech lithium battery equipment can effectively improve efficiency, reduce energy consumption, and reduce equipment input costs with the same production capacity.
Battery network understands that as early as 2006, Times Hi-Tech has begun to develop and manufacture vacuum drying product lines, and today, the company has provided reliable intelligent solutions for many domestic and international well-known battery companies, and led or participated in the formulation of a number of industry and national standards.
Taking Times Hi-Tech automatic vacuum drying system - tunnel equipment as an example, the equipment can achieve automated, intelligent and large-scale production, and the efficiency can be increased by 3-5 times, which greatly improves the production capacity advantage; At the same time, the division of labor of each process is specialized, the operating environment is of high standard and constant, and the upper and lower process cavities are seamlessly connected, which can realize dynamic vacuum transfer and transportation, without the need for a drying room, and can greatly reduce energy consumption while providing battery performance and consistency.
"The first-class production facilities of nearly 120,000 square meters in Ganzhou base ensure that the company has a strong advantage in the delivery of lithium battery equipment." Tian Xiaobo said that Times Hi-Tech adheres to customer needs as the fundamental starting point, has successively introduced a first-class doctoral research and development team, and set up a research institute to conduct in-depth process experiment verification on different incoming materials of customers to obtain high-quality vacuum drying solutions.
It is reported that in terms of customers, Times Hi-Tech has almost covered the leading enterprises in the high-end power battery camp, including CATL, BYD, Panasonic, China Innovation Airlines, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Honeycomb Energy, Funeng Technology, EVE Lithium Energy, etc. At the same time, the company is vigorously developing related customers in the field of energy storage.
It is worth noting that in addition to vacuum drying equipment, Times Hi-Tech is currently focusing on the layout of the entire logistics equipment and warehousing system business.
At present, battery companies still have many needs for the efficiency, safety, process, and accuracy of the manufacturing process. Among them, smart warehousing and logistics, as an important part, plays a variety of roles such as improving production efficiency and reducing operating costs, which can promote battery manufacturing into an efficient and ideal state.
"Times Hi-Tech has been providing smart logistics equipment for customers in the mechanical, electronic and optoelectronic industries for many years." Tian Xiaobo emphasized that the company has provided whole or segmented logistics equipment for a number of leading enterprises, including Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Funeng Technology, BAK Battery, BYD, etc.
According to Tian Xiaobo, the Times Hi-Tech intelligent logistics warehousing system has realized the combination of software and hardware, with the material pallet as the information carrier unit, integrating intelligent three-dimensional warehouses (shelves, stackers), automated production conveyor lines, assembly and dismantling robots (three-axis or multi-axis robot equipment), WCS warehouse control system, WMS warehouse management system and MES system, realizing real-time tracking of production management system, real-time monitoring of production processes and other fully automatic operation modes, helping customers from all walks of life to build a real smart factory.
In the context of the accelerated development of the industry, the market demand for smart logistics integration business is strong, and the overall new orders signed by Times Hi-Tech smart logistics system business are also continuing to improve. Tian Xiaobo said that for Times Hi-Tech, the company's research institute, engineering laboratory, provincial engineering technology research center, and provincial industrial design center have made a lot of attempts and preparations around efficiency improvement, and will continue to invest to help improve equipment production efficiency.
It is understood that the core products of Times Hi-Tech have passed the carbon footprint certification and are the national major industrial energy-saving technology and equipment manufacturing enterprises confirmed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; Manufacturing single champion enterprise; National-level specialized and new "little giant" enterprise; The core products won the "China Excellent Patent Award", and at the same time, the company undertook the construction of "Vacuum Technology Engineering Laboratory" and "Guangdong Engineering Technology Research Center" in Shenzhen.
At the same time, Times Hi-Tech has also set up a software company to develop MES production execution system for customers, closely cooperating and communicating smoothly in all aspects of design, processing, assembly and commissioning, reducing costs and ensuring high quality and high cost performance for users. The company's manufacturing center has more than 500 sets of high-precision large-scale processing equipment to ensure the requirements of high-end, high-quality and high-precision processing, and bring more efficient and high-quality overall quality control and large-scale production to industry customers.
Continue to innovate to help the upgrading of the new energy industry
Recently, Guolian Securities analyzed in a research report that after the impact of the overseas epidemic weakened, Japanese and South Korean battery factories such as LG, SK, and Samsung SDI accelerated the expansion progress to consolidate their market share; Local battery factories in Europe and the United States such as ABF, Northvolt, ACC, PowerCo, etc. have begun to expand production to improve the local supply chain, and China's lithium battery equipment has global competitiveness and is expected to benefit from this round of overseas expansion.
According to incomplete statistics from the battery network, up to now, a number of domestic lithium battery companies, including CATL, EVE Lithium Energy, Honeycomb Energy, Envision Power, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Azure Lithium Core, Funeng Technology, China Innovation Aviation, and Pine Technology, have officially announced that they have built factories overseas, and some of the company's overseas factories have been put into production.
"Times Hi-Tech has successively approached battery manufacturing projects with overseas markets." Tian Xiaobo said that the company has cooperated with Guoxuan Hi-Tech and other battery companies in overseas projects.
EVTank said that in the next few years, the growth of the global lithium battery equipment market will rely more on overseas markets, and overseas lithium battery projects represented by Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia will usher in a construction climax in the next few years, thereby driving the rapid growth of the overseas lithium battery equipment market size, which is expected to be 126.65 billion yuan in 2030.
With the increase in overseas market demand, Times Hi-Tech will further seize overseas market share by virtue of cost, technology and scale advantages.
On the other hand, with the industrial application of new technologies and processes such as large cylindrical batteries, (semi-)solid-state batteries, new composite current collector materials, all-tab and dry electrodes, new equipment demand will arise.
Tian Xiaobo said that when Times Hi-Tech was promoting lithium battery equipment, the company had paid full attention to the development trend of other battery technologies, so the company's products could achieve rapid switching between different battery technologies.
It is worth mentioning that the explosive growth of lithium battery equipment, cross-border warehousing and logistics enterprises are also increasing, the idea of playing both benign and bad, market competition is also intensifying. In Tian Xiaobo's view, the competition in the equipment industry is becoming more and more fierce, especially from 2022, there are more and more new entrants, and more and more people share the cake.
EVTank said that the market concentration of China's lithium battery equipment enterprises is low, mainly because there are many types of equipment in the front, middle and back sections of the lithium battery production line and PACK, and the industry threshold is relatively low.
"The company has always believed that continuous innovation can maintain market competitiveness." In Tian Xiaobo's view, in terms of design and production, Times Hi-Tech adheres to the whole process control, closely cooperates and communicates smoothly from all aspects of design, processing, assembly and commissioning, reduces costs, and ensures high quality and high cost performance for users.