In recent years, the PEEK material market has shown a trend of rapid development. This material is widely used in automobiles, robots and other fields due to its light weight and excellent physical properties, and is expected to usher in an explosion in the next few years.
Compared with engineering plastics, PEEK materials have higher rigidity and toughness, which can meet the needs of various complex applications. At the same time, compared with metal materials, PEEK material has obvious lightweight advantages, and is suitable for replacing steel with plastic, which further reduces the weight of the product and improves the performance.
However, the production process and technical barriers of PEEK materials are high. Consistency and crystallization properties need to be precisely controlled during the production process, and the right melt index and viscosity balance needs to be achieved. In addition, it takes about 7 years for the production capacity to ramp up, and the downstream customer certification development cycle also takes 3-5 years. This makes the barriers to mass production extremely high, and only four companies in the world have a mass production capacity of more than 1,000 tons.
In terms of global structure, Victrex is a global leading enterprise, with an annual production capacity of 7,150 tons, accounting for 60% of the global share. In 2021, the market shares of domestic leading companies Zhongyan Co., Ltd. and PFLUON will be 8% and 3%, respectively. Among them, Zhongyan Co., Ltd. ranks fourth in the global PEEK market, showing the trend and advantages of domestic substitution.
It is worth noting that the cost of fluoroketone, the upstream raw material of PEEK materials, accounts for nearly half, while a small number of core equipment and devices still rely on imports. This shows that there are certain challenges and uncertainties in the industry's ** chain.
Despite this, key companies in the industry, such as Zhongyan Co., Ltd., Xinhan New Materials and Zhongxin Fluorine Materials, are still actively deploying and developing. As the world's fourth largest PEEK producer, Zhongyan has achieved an annual production capacity of 1,000 tons. With its high-quality customer structure and long-term cooperative relationship, Xinhan New Materials has occupied a place in the market. After the successful trial production of 5,000 tons of fluoroketone, Zhongxin Fluorine's fluorone production capacity has ranked first in China.
To sum up, although the PEEK material market is facing challenges in terms of technology and chain, with the continuous expansion of its application field and the acceleration of the trend of domestic substitution, the market potential is still huge. For investors who pay attention to this field, companies such as Zhongyan Co., Ltd. and Xinhan New Materials are worth paying attention to.
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