Most of the A-share sectors fell this week, but there was one sector that sprung up - PEEK material concept stocks continued to be active. Zhongxin Fluorine, a producer of PEEK's upstream raw material fluoroketone (DFBP), recorded 4 boards in 5 days on FridayHuami New Materials rose more than 20% on Friday and the largest increase this week reached 88%, Huami New Materials has received 44 institutional visits in the past month, the company's main rubber and plastic materials and products, Huami New Materials disclosed investor relations activities on November 2, the company's special engineering plastics project mainly produces PA66, PBT, PEI, PEEK, PI and other high-end special modified engineering plastics, mainly used in automobiles, high-speed rail, construction machinery and other fields, and is currently in the climbing stage;Xinhan New Materials rose nearly 13% intraday on Friday and the stock price has risen by 77% in the last 6 trading days, and the research report of Chen Chuanhong and others on December 18 pointed out that Xinhan New Materials is an earlier manufacturer engaged in the R&D and production of fluoroketone (DFBP), the core raw material of PEEK, with a production capacity of 2,500 tons On December 14, Xinhan New Materials disclosed that the vast majority of the company's DFBP is used in the polymerization of PEEK, and a small part is used as a pharmaceutical intermediate for the production of APIs.
On the news side, recently, Tesla launched Optimus-Gen 2 (the second generation of Optimus Prime)**, compared with the first generation, the second generation of Optimus has a number of significant performance improvements: walking speed increased by 30%, weight reduction of 10kg, balance and whole body control have been improved. This time, Tesla did not disclose the specific method of weight loss of the second-generation Optimus, only stating that "there is no (functional performance) sacrifice in weight loss". Open source** believes that humanoid robots carry limited power, and need to reduce weight and increase battery life by using lightweight materials. Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) is a high-end engineering plastic, the strength is about 8 times that of aluminum alloy, and the density is about 1 3 of aluminum alloy. In addition, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", emphasizing the need to study key technologies such as high-strength and lightweight new materials, and create a humanoid robot body structure with high safety, high reliability and high environmental adaptability. Haitong ** Shen Yuquan said in a research report on December 19 that PEEK is a high-end engineering plastic at the tip of the pyramid and an excellent solution to achieve "lightweight". In the first half of the year, the most powerful trend in the first half of the A-share artificial intelligence was not the model stocks, but the upstream optical module CPOOf course, there will be people who are saying that PEEK is not a word, such as this week's hype of Fuheng New Materials, not to say that the sales volume is zero, and even the output is still unknown (currently in the small test stage), but ** is originally a speculation expectation, such as the original CPO leader Liante Technology, the company has repeatedly reminded the risk but does not affect the quadruple of the stock price.
In the past few days, the PEEK concept has been popular in the capital market for three main reasons:
First, it has a wide range of applications. PEEK materials have a wide range of applications in many fields, including aerospace, medical devices, automobile manufacturing, electronic appliances, semiconductor manufacturing, etc. These fields have very high requirements for materials, and PEEK materials have excellent performance and stability to meet the needs of these fields. Therefore, with the rapid development of these fields, the market demand for PEEK materials is also increasing, which promotes the popularity of the PEEK concept.
Second, the market scale is huge. According to agency estimates, by 2027, the global demand for PEEK materials will reach more than 120,000 tons, and the market size will exceed 10 billion US dollars. This huge market scale has attracted the attention of many investors, who are optimistic about the future development prospects of PEEK materials, and have laid out related investment in the industry chain.
The third is the trend of localization substitution. As the world's largest producer and consumer of plastics, China's demand for PEEK materials is also increasing. However, at present, domestic PEEK materials mainly rely on imports, which are high and unstable. Therefore, domestic substitution has become an important trend in the development of PEEK materials. With the continuous progress of domestic technology and the expansion of production capacity, domestic PEEK materials gradually have a competitive advantage in terms of performance and quality, and gradually replace imported products. This trend of localization substitution has brought more development opportunities to the PEEK material market and promoted the popularity of the PEEK concept.
According to estimates, the market demand for PEEK materials in China may increase from 2,334 tons to 5,079 tons from 2022 to 2027, corresponding to a compound annual growth rate of about 168%；The market size will be increased by 149.6 billion yuan to 283.8 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of about 137%。At the same time, it should also be noted that at present, Chinese enterprises have overcome the difficulties in the research and development of PEEK, and realized the localization from upstream raw materials to PEEK, and only some reaction vessels such as polymerization kettles and washing kettles need to be imported. But PEEK still has some limitations:
One is the high cost. Although PEEK has excellent properties, it is much higher than other engineering plastics. PEEK material is about 30-400,000 tons in China and 80-1 million tons abroad. This makes it difficult for PEEK to be widely rolled out in the civilian market.
Second, it is difficult to process. PEEK has a high melting point and viscosity, and for traditional processing methods, such as injection molding and extrusion, it requires higher temperature and pressure, as well as specialized equipment and technology. It adds to the difficulty and cost of processing.
Third, the verification cycle is long. It takes about 7 years for the production capacity of PEEK materials to ramp up, and it takes 3-5 years for the downstream customer certification and development cycle, and the barriers to batch manufacturing are extremely high, and only 4 companies in the world have a mass production capacity of more than 1,000 tons.