How will fosu technology return to power battery?

Posted 2024-03-15 00:00:00 +0000 UTC

In the cold winter of the industry, more courage and opportunities are needed for the construction of power battery projects. Recently, the new energy vehicle power lithium ion and system project invested and constructed by fosu Technology (000973) was officially started in Zijin Industrial Park, Heyuan City, Guangdong Province. The annual output of the project is 8gwh, the first phase investment is 1 billion yuan, and the power lithium-ion battery and system production line and power lithium-ion battery R & D center with an annual output of 2gwh are to be built. It is expected that the project will be completed and put into trial operation in October next year, and the second and third phases of the project will be stepped forward. Fosu technology entered the field of power battery mainly to integrate with its previous new energy business, optimize the product structure, add new profit growth points to its weak performance, and promote the company's transformation and upgrading to the new energy market. However, after several rounds of capital and industrial expansion, the power battery industry has entered the stage of rapid shuffle and integration. Under the pressure of sharp decline and intensified market competition, the power battery industry is in a cold wind in 2019. At present, a large number of battery enterprises have actively or passively withdrawn from the power market, and a number of enterprises will be eliminated next year. At the same time, this is not the first time that fosu technology has laid out its power battery business. As early as 2015, fosu technology planned to lay out the power battery through capital increase and merger, but it failed in the end. However, fosu technology once again entered the power market, which was not optimistic at the early stage of the market. Fosu technology was founded in June 1988. In 2010, the company determined the development strategy of "focusing on the research and development and production of new energy, new materials and energy conservation and environmental protection industries". Now, it has gradually formed an industrial layout with four series of products, namely, dialysis materials, electrical materials, optical materials and barrier materials. In 2006, fosu technology established a joint venture with Foshan City (hereinafter referred to as Jinhui High Tech), holding 55% of the shares, mainly engaged in wet diaphragm and coating diaphragm. Its customers are digital battery manufacturers, and it is one of the earliest lithium battery diaphragm enterprises in China. As one of the earliest mass-produced wet process lithium ion separator enterprises in China, Jinhui high tech's early business has grown significantly and become an important profit growth pillar of fosu technology. However, with the increasing competition in the domestic diaphragm industry and the sharp decline in new energy subsidies, the price and gross profit margin of lithium battery diaphragm fell sharply, and the profits of Jinhui high tech in the diaphragm business also fell. At present, the market competition of lithium battery separator is fierce. The main theme of the second and third-line separator enterprises seems to be the sharp contraction of business, strategic transformation, loss stripping and enterprise restructuring. However, Jinhui high tech failed to enter the first tier team. Currently, its business share in fosu technology is relatively small and its profit growth is limited. After the diaphragm, fosu technology laid out new energy for the second time and focused on the field of aluminum plastic film for lithium battery with higher technical barriers. It is understood that fosu technology aluminum plastic film project started in 2008 and completed product structure design and key performance breakthrough from 2008 to the beginning of 2011; plant construction and equipment matching were completed from 2011 to the middle of 2012 and entered the industrialization stage; trial production was started in the middle of 2012 and sent to key customers for batch trial evaluation, and the market was officially sold at the beginning of the year. From the progress point of view, fosu technology's aluminum plastic film business seems to be developing smoothly, which is expected to achieve substitution and break the situation of Japan and South Korea's aluminum plastic film monopoly on the Chinese market. However, the actual progress of fosu technology's aluminum-plastic film business is not ideal, and it has not been able to achieve mass production. In April 2016, fosu technology said on the investor interaction platform that aluminum plastic film is a new material independently researched and developed by the company. At present, the product is in the stage of pilot test and market development, and there is no large-scale mass production. In March 2019, fosu technology said that the company's aluminum plastic film is currently in the market promotion period, mainly 3C digital battery customers, and its application in the field of power battery is in the evaluation stage. From 2008 to 2019, after more than 10 years, the aluminum plastic film business, which is highly expected by fosu technology, is still in the promotion period and fails to achieve large-scale mass production, indicating that its product market competitiveness is insufficient, and there is great uncertainty whether it can achieve market breakthrough in the future. During this period, fosu technology has arranged new energy for the third time, and plans to quickly enter the power battery market through merger and acquisition. On December 17, 2015, Foshi technology released a notice that it planned to invest 350 million yuan to increase capital and purchase its equity from Shanghai Delong Power Battery Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Delong), holding 35% of its equity. It is planned to invest in the construction of power lithium-ion battery project together with Delong energy and spacetime electric. In February 2016, fosu technology announced that it plans to raise an additional 1.3 billion yuan plus code lithium battery business. On June 16, fosu technology announced that the company decided to terminate the planning of the non-public offering of shares due to the failure of the company and its partners to reach an agreement on the agreed matters and sign official legal documents within the validity period of the cooperation framework agreement. This means that fosu technology's plan to acquire the equity of delongenergy and invest in the construction of power battery project has failed. The "failure" of fosu technology's three new energy distribution shows that there is a high technical threshold in the new energy industry. Under the pressure of further decline in subsidies and intensified market competition, higher requirements will be put forward for enterprises in terms of product quality, technical level, capital strength and customer structure. Compared with before, the current layout of power battery project of fosu technology will face more pressure and challenges. On the one hand, in 2019, new energy subsidies declined sharply, market competition intensified, and market concentration increased dramatically. A large number of battery enterprises actively or passively launched the power battery market, with significantly fewer market participants. According to GGII statistics, the top ten battery enterprises in terms of installed capacity from January to October 2019 totaled about 41.1gwh, accounting for 88.6% of the total. The first two enterprises account for about 32.81% of the total. At the same time, only about 30 battery companies have installed power batteries in the first 10 months, and the number is expected to further decrease next year. On the other hand, at present, the square battery occupies a dominant position in the power market, and the market share of the cylindrical and soft pack batteries has obviously declined or the growth is weak. Before that, fosu technology and Shanghai silicon Institute jointly established graphene power lithium-ion battery research and development center, which is dedicated to the application research and industrialization of graphene in power lithium-ion batteries and polymer membrane materials, focusing on the key issues such as graphene macro preparation, graphene use in lithium batteries, technology and product transformation. At present, the pilot production line of lithium-ion battery has been built in the project, and the pilot test certificate of 3.3ah energy type 18650 battery has been completed, with the energy density reaching 260wh / kg, and some pilot tests have been completed; the pilot test certificate of 1.3ah high-power long-life graphene 18650 battery has been completed and pilot production has been carried out, with the charging capacity reaching 80% in 6 minutes. At the same time, the small test of 3.4ah energy battery was carried out. It is worth noting that a large number of cylindrical battery enterprises have begun to adjust their market strategies, choose to slow down the power business and actively transform to enter the non power market, and generally hold a pessimistic attitude towards the performance of cylindrical battery in the future power market. However, it is uncertain that fosu technology will choose the cylindrical battery as its competitive power market product, which will make it in a inferior position in the future competition.

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