There are two structural trends in the future due to deflation in the bearing market

Trend 1: specialized division of labor + industrial chain transfer, optimistic about local parts enterprises with cost advantages

Important industry trends of bearing industry:

① The pressure on the profit side and the uncertainty of the external environment have increased, prompting the bearing factory to outsource more production processes. A more thorough professional division of labor can enable bearing factories to focus on the core barriers at the bearing design end, improve their ability to respond flexibly to customer needs, and reduce the risk of heavy asset investment at the same time;

② Benefiting from the improvement of domestic technology level and labor quality, the bearing industry chain is expected to be gradually transferred to China.

Under this trend, the industrial chain transfer is expected to expand the domestic bearing industry chain cake, and the professional division of labor in the bearing industry is expected to enable parts and components enterprises to undertake more processing procedures and improve product added value and profitability. Therefore, it is recommended to pay attention to local bearing parts and components enterprises with cost advantages, and the relevant main links include ferrules, rolling elements, etc.

Trend 2: expansion of wind power industry + import substitution, optimistic about local bearing leaders that break through to high-end bearings

With the help of policies, the average annual installed capacity of wind power during the "14th five year plan" is expected to exceed 50gw, the bearing space of wind turbines is expected to continue to expand, and the large-scale wind turbines are expected to increase the value of single bearing products.

It is estimated that the market scale of wind turbine bearings is expected to exceed 10billion yuan in a single year during the 14th Five Year Plan period. The localization rate of yaw pitch bearings has been high, and the main shaft bearings above 3wm are still mainly monopolized by foreign capital.

In the case of insufficient supply of wind turbine spindles and limited production capacity of overseas brand wind turbine bearings, there is great room for domestic replacement of wind turbine bearings.

First, a brief introduction is given to the wind turbine bearing, which is the joint of mechanical equipment. Wind turbine bearing is one of the parts used to connect the yaw, transmission and other systems in the unit. It can generally be divided into three types: main shaft bearing (1-3 sets), yaw bearing (1 set) and pitch bearing (3 sets).

Among them, the main shaft bearing is used to support the main shaft, and its theoretical life can be as long as 20 years (but the bearing often has lubrication problems). Yaw bearing is used to connect engine room and tower, which can track the change of wind direction and improve power generation efficiency. The pitch bearing connects the blade and hub, thus changing the angle of the blade.

Due to the relatively simple production process of yaw and pitch bearings, the new strong link and bearing shafts have basically realized the import substitution, so we also focus on the main shaft bearings.

Combing the overall competition pattern of wind turbine main shaft bearings, you will find that although the cost of this area accounts for only about 5% of the cost of wind turbines, it is still mainly controlled by traditional giants such as Germany, Sweden and Japan. Our new strong link, Luozhou axis and other head players account for less than 10% of the market.

In 2006, the government issued the policy of "70% localization rate of wind power equipment" (but it was later cancelled). Facing the powerful enemies of Europe and Japan, how do domestic leading enterprises make efforts on the spindle bearings at present?

Taking 3MW units as an example, among the domestic first tier players, xinqianglian has been able to achieve mass production. For example, among the 1000 units shipped by Mingyang intelligent, an onshore wind power player, more than 80% of the main shaft bearings are from xinqianglian, and the delivery period is generally about half a year. Goldwind technology, Dongfang Electric and Shanghai Electric also have cooperative relations with xinqianglian. The progress of Wazhou and Luozhou was slightly slow, but they also began to be supplied in small quantities. Moreover, it is said that vision energy continues to export the main shaft bearing technology to Luozhou shaft, and is determined to make his little brother thrive.

When the power is greater than 5MW, the bearing processing is more difficult, which puts forward more stringent requirements for the R & D and production capacity of enterprises. At present, only xinqianglian has achieved small batch production, and other local players are still in the stage of crossing the river by feeling the stones on this road. The gap between the two now seems to be growing, and the Matthew effect is obvious.

Here is another important information. Generally speaking, it takes at least three years from small batch to large-scale production, because this also includes the customer's verification process of product stability. Therefore, we still have a long way to go in the domestic replacement of high-power spindle bearings.

The overseas traditional giants mentioned just now also have the courage not to reduce prices based on this industry experience. This courage is given by product design and application experience.

In the future, according to the prediction of the organization, the scale of the wind turbine bearing market will exceed 10 billion yuan (10.6 billion yuan) in three years, and the industry has broad growth space.