China is the world's largest consumer of steel and welding materials. According to statistics in 2016, China's steel output stood at 1.138 billion tons, accounting for more than half of the global total. The output of welding materials was approximately 5.68 million tons, also over half of the world's production. This article analyzes the future demand and development trend of welding materials in China.
I. Market Demand and Current Industrial Consumption of Welding Materials
1. Sustained growth in market demand
The report to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that basically realizing industrialization is one of the major economic development tasks for China in the first two decades of the 21st century. Currently, China is in the middle stage of industrialization. The development experience of other countries shows that the consumption of steel and welding materials keeps rising during the industrialization process. For instance, the consumption of steel and welding materials in the United States and Japan peaked in the 1970s when they basically completed industrialization, before declining gradually.
In the next decade, China's consumption of steel and welding materials will continue to grow at a moderate pace, with greater focus on product variety optimization and quality improvement. Experts predict that China's steel consumption will reach 1.2 to 1.5 billion tons in ten years, and the corresponding demand for welding materials will hit 7 to 8 million tons.
2. Demand by Industry
In terms of industrial demand, the biggest gap in steel and welding material consumption between China and developed economies lies in structural composition. In recent years, construction steel accounts for around 55% of China’s total steel consumption, while steel used in manufacturing makes up less than 45%. By contrast, construction steel only takes up 22% to 30% in the US, Europe and Japan, with manufacturing steel accounting for 60% to 66%. This disparity reflects China’s current development stage, featuring large-scale infrastructure construction and urbanization.
II. Major Development Trends of Welding Materials
1. Welding automation drives structural adjustment of welding material categories
In the mid-1980s, welding electrodes made up roughly 50% of total welding materials in developed countries. By 2004, the proportion had dropped below 20% in Europe, North America and Japan. Currently, automated and semi-automated welding accounts for over 80% of all welding work in these regions.
2. Advances in iron and steel technology fuel product upgrading and quality improvement of welding materials
China is striving to transform from a major steel producer to a powerful steel industry nation. A wide range of upgraded, high-performance and high-quality steel products have been launched in recent years. The manufacturing equipment and technologies of the domestic steel industry have also achieved remarkable progress. For example, more than a dozen medium and heavy plate rolling mills to be put into operation will outperform existing units in Japan and the US, ranking among the world’s new-generation modern rolling mills. They provide solid equipment support for implementing controlled rolling and cooling processes and mass-producing high-performance medium and heavy steel plates.
3. Promote a market mechanism of premium quality at fair prices for conventional welding materials
Conventional welding materials with large output and wide application, such as E43 series carbon steel electrodes, HJ431 welding flux and ER50-6 copper-coated welding wires, dominate China’s production and consumption. Due to overcapacity and oversupply, their domestic and export prices are merely 50% to 60% of high-grade equivalent products in the global market. Some manufacturers engage in cut-throat competition by adopting a strategy of low cost, inferior quality and low price. As a result, many domestic users complain that the quality of conventional products like E43 series electrodes has declined rather than improved.
Overseas markets regard China’s exported conventional welding materials as low-grade products. Though cheap, they have poor quality and can only be used in non-critical projects, which has severely damaged the reputation of China’s welding material industry.
4. Strengthen cooperation with steel mills to address the shortage of welding wire varieties
A major bottleneck restricting the development of China’s welding materials is that solid wires for gas shielded welding and submerged arc welding fall short in variety and quality to meet market demand, including wires for high-strength steel, heat-resistant steel, low-temperature steel, weathering steel and stainless steel of various strength grades.
The so-called copper-free welding wires launched by manufacturers at home and abroad should be properly named special coated welding wires. Differences in coating compositions and surface treatment processes among manufacturers lead to varied product performance. High-quality coatings and surface treatments not only deliver rust prevention and lubrication, but also eliminate copper fume during welding, improve arc stability and reduce spatter. Relevant technologies are still being continuously optimized worldwide.
It is expected that when matched with digital inverter welding machines that precisely control metal transfer, such coated wires will enable high-efficiency, low-spatter high-current CO₂ welding with performance comparable to flux-cored wires. This will be a key development direction in the future.
