Chinese green silicon carbide market in a blur
----Interview with Ding Hui, general manager of Binzhou Dong’en Materials Technology Co., Ltd.
Asian Metal: Thank you very much for taking our interview. Would you please give a brief introduction on your company at first?
Thank you for your interview. Our company is a material technology corporation integrated with research, development, operation and service of silicon carbide products. We mainly engage in products produced by silicon carbide grinding machine and cutting edge, segment sand, grain sand, super micropowder and nanoscale micropowder. Adhering to corporate philosophy of Sincerity, Trust, Gratitude, Win-win, we devote our efforts to a new material company that is of scientific and technological innovation, elaborate management and qualified service.
Asian Metal: Green silicon carbide market has been seeing continuously dropping prices staring from H2 of 2016, what do you think of this situation?
In the recent year, photovoltaic solar wire-electrode cutting technology has developed rapidly and the traditional mortar cutting technique is gradually being replaced by diamond wire cutting technology, which is unexpected. As we all know, green silicon carbide micropowder is produced by 6 procedures within 1-1.5 months. As producers don’t know much about downstream market, large volumes of products are backlogged, causing chaotic market condition and continuously decreasing prices.
Asian Metal: Could you please introduce the current supply and demand situation of green silicon carbide market?
Affected by national environmental protection inspection in recent years and sharply declining demand volume, plenty of silicon carbide smelters are out of production, even though they could resume production, they need install a good deal of environmental protection equipment, which will bring them great pressure; thus, some smelters would withdraw from the silicon carbide market and turn to industries such as carburant and washing fused alumina smelting and grain sand production. Nevertheless, with smelters’ silicon carbide stocks gradually used up during the production suspension period, silicon carbide market will gradually see the balance of supply and demand instead of severe oversupply.
Asian Metal: Green silicon carbide micropowder is gradually being replaced by diamond wire in the application of photovoltaic domain, what in your opinion is the major reason for this phenomenon?
Four advantages are found comparing diamond wire cutting with silicon carbide cutting
1.The former sees less unit consumption of silicon;
2.The capacity of the former is 2-3 times larger than that of the latter, so as the efficiency;
3.The former’s cost of auxiliary materials decreases;
4.Environmental protection requirements.
Asian Metal: Where the green silicon carbide micropowder industry would go?
Traditional mortar cutting technique will be eliminated gradually in the pv wire-electrode cutting market given the advantages of wire-cutting.
The green silicon carbide micro-powder industry will change from uneven quality and counterfeit to high quality, high standard and normalization.
Asian Metal: What influence do you believe will environmental protection inspection exert on green silicon carbide market?
The environmental protection inspection exerted great influence: plenty of silicon carbide smelters halted production and processing plants of silicon carbide bankrupted. While seen from a different perspective, it was a process of selecting the superior and eliminating the inferior; a good deal of small-and-medium-sized companies were squeezed and had to choose transformation and upgrading to a path of cooperation and mutual benefits instead of chaotic competition.
Asian Metal: How would green silicon carbide market perform during the remaining months of 2017?
The future green silicon carbide market will mainly develop towards segment sand and grain sand while micropowder will mainly be applied to semiconductor, magnetic materials and piezo-electric crystal. Application of silicon carbide will develop towards the direction of high-end, high-precision and advanced and silicon carbide, as a kind of superconducting materials and high energy-loaded materials, will play a crucial role in the material science, aerospace and internet technology domains. We, as a service-oriented and manufacturing-type of silicon carbide enterprise, will devote ourselves to research and development innovation and perfection and make contributions to China’s prospect with all the friends of silicon carbide industries.
