LED industry re-emerges and expands production

"This year's LED market is the best year, there will be a very good blowout situation. At present, our order quantity is discharged to two months." Zhu Bingzhong, deputy general manager of Qinshang Optoelectronics, told reporters that this good opportunity is LED development history has not been encountered.

In the face of the industry recovery in the first half of the year, Qinshang Optoelectronics, a manufacturer based on LED lighting applications, is currently deploying its own channel network, and intends to build 1,000 sales terminals during the year. The warming is the opportunity for upstream epitaxial chips and midstream packaging companies that have suffered from overcapacity last year to see the rebirth.

At this time, industry research institutions and industry insiders generally expressed an optimistic estimate of LED market conditions throughout the year.

According to the statistics of the High-tech LED Industry Research Institute (GLII), the output value of China's LED indoor lighting in 2013 still maintains a high-speed growth trend, which will reach 55.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 66%.

"With the gradual maturity of LED lighting technology, the cost performance of LED lighting products is getting higher and higher, consumers' understanding and confidence in LEDs are also increasing. The price difference between LED lighting products and traditional lighting products is at an acceptable level. Demand has expanded dramatically.” Dr. Zhang Xiaofei, CEO of Gaogong LED, pointed out that 2013 is a crucial year for LED lighting to enter the outbreak period. The growth of LED application is very fast. The growth rate of the first quarter of this year is 50 compared with the first quarter of last year. %, LED lighting will have a penetration rate of more than 20% by the end of 2013, which means that the midstream package and upstream epitaxial chips can be shared.

The market has just seen signs of recovery, and many LED companies have been unable to hold back their dreams of expanding production for a long time.

For a time, hundreds of millions or even billions of new construction and expansion projects were placed on the desks of many LED companies.

From sapphire substrates, epitaxial chips to packaging to lighting applications, the entire LED industry chain seems to have returned to the era of not bad money in 2008 and 2009.

New expansion projects are concentrated on the horse

On May 28, Sanan Optoelectronics announced that the company intends to apply for non-public issuance of no more than 208.6 million A shares, and the total amount of funds raised is not more than 3.3 billion yuan. The funds are mainly used for Wuhu Optoelectronics Industrialization (Phase II) project.

According to the announcement, Wuhu Optoelectronics Industrialization (Phase II) project will expand the production scale of blue and green light chips on the basis of the first phase of the project. Sanan Optoelectronics said that after the project is completed, it will produce 12.23 million pieces of LED epitaxial wafers and 25.514 billion blue and green chips.

According to the staff of the Board of Directors of Sanan Optoelectronics, the second phase of the project is expected to introduce 100 MOCVD machines. After the completion of the project, it will be more conducive to the company to give full play to scale effects, reduce production costs, enhance profitability, further consolidate the company's industry position and continue to strengthen. The company's comprehensive competitiveness in the global photovoltaic field.

Just two days after the issuance of the issuance announcement, Sanan Optoelectronics has thrown heavy news. According to the announcement of the foreign investment issued by Sanan, the company decided to cooperate with Shenzhen Weiwei Photovoltaic Lighting Co., Ltd. in Hutou Industry, Anxi County, Fujian Province. The park established a joint venture R&D, production and sales company for LED applications, with a registered capital of 150 million, Sanan Optoelectronics invested 22.5 million yuan, accounting for 15% of the registered capital; Weiwei Photovoltaic invested 127.5 million yuan, accounting for 85% of the registered capital.

Sanan’s combination of boxing is far more than this. On June 19th, Sanan Optoelectronics’ board of directors passed a resolution on the expansion of Xiamen’s base, and decided to invest no more than 280 million new shares by its subsidiary Xiamen Sanan Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. Advanced 20 single-cavity machines or 5 four-cavity machine-connected gallium nitride MOCVD equipments, and expand part of the LED chip production line.

Another chip giant, Dehao Runda, is laid out earlier. Since the second half of 2012, Dehao Runda has successively controlled NVC Lighting and invested in Weimei Shengjing. A series of integration actions are frequent. At present, Dehao Runda has completed everything from LED epitaxial wafers and chips to packaging to applications (lamps, The integrated industrial chain layout of the display).

In its main business chip business, Dehao Runda is also stepping up the introduction of new MOCVD machines. “The factory and the preparatory work are currently underway. It takes about 6 months to put into mass production.” Wang Donglei, Chairman of Dehao Runda, told the reporter.

In addition to the epitaxial chip project, Jingsheng Electromechanical's sapphire crystal rod project, Tiantong Holding's sapphire substrate project, Tiandian Optoelectronics' Anxi packaging project, Hongli Optoelectronics' packaging expansion project, Dongshan Precision's packaging application, etc. And expansion projects have recently been released.

"In all aspects of the situation, lighting demand has entered a rising channel." G20-LED summit member company - Philips Lumileds Asia regional marketing director Zhou Xuejun pointed out that the current expansion of the production, the first half of the power package market is tight supply and demand This indicates that the demand for indoor lighting is rising very fast. The pace of LED companies' accelerated expansion in terms of production capacity and market channels is also in line with market demand.

Some insiders said that the growth of application market demand is one reason why many companies have recently built or expanded LED projects, but it is not ruled out that industry giants such as Sanan hope to squeeze competitors through the scale cost advantage of expansion. The purpose of further expanding market share. In the downturn of the market, Sanan had taken the lead in dumping goods many times, and at most, it took 30% of the price.

Market reappears

Li Guoping, chairman of Hongli Optoelectronics, a member of the G20-LED Summit, believes that through the competition in recent years, the price of LEDs has fallen sharply in 2012, and both prices and quality have reached a very good level. Many hotels and homes use LED lighting products. In the next two or three years, LED lighting should be the best period. Whether it is a chip or a package, it has begun to scale and resources have begun to concentrate. Now that chip production capacity has begun to concentrate on several giants, packaging will gradually concentrate resources.

However, this round of industry recovery has also been treated rationally, many industry insiders said that the current LED lighting products on the market, whether it is blocked in the channel, or has already reached the terminal consumption, is not sure. After the third quarter, it may be possible to have a more accurate judgment on the degree of market launch.

In the past few years, blind expansion of LED chip production, waste of resources and price avalanche last year, industry losses, has already sounded the "alarm bell" for the development of the entire LED, this round of expansion has triggered the market's concerns about overcapacity .

According to statistics released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently, in the first five months of 2013, LED production increased significantly compared with the same period of last year, with an increase of 46.7%.

According to GLII statistics, as of the end of 2012, the number of domestic MOCVD has reached 917, and last year's MOCVD capacity utilization rate was only about 30%.

“Upstream chip industry has suffered from overcapacity in previous years, resulting in widespread loss of chip companies and extremely low capacity utilization.” Xiao Chengfeng, deputy general manager of Inspur Huaguang, a member of G20-LED Summit, said that the rapid development of downstream LED lighting is on the extension of the upper and middle reaches. Both the chip and the package have put forward more requirements, excellent performance, higher luminous efficiency and lower cost, all of which are testing the R&D and scale manufacturing capabilities of the upstream and midstream enterprises. "Although from the current point of view, the orders of packaging companies are relatively saturated, but it can not be said that the packaging industry has completely emerged from the predicament of last year. The specific situation depends on whether the current situation can not be continued in the next few months." Luo Jing, vice president of sales of Zhejiang Zhongzhou Optoelectronics, said.

Zhou Shui-ming, general manager of Jiamei Times, a member of the G20-LED Summit, believes that overcapacity is relative.

At present, the upstream and midstream, the entire industry's production capacity is surplus. “The LEDs are very hot, leading to excessive investment in the early stage. Now, if we continue to invest, it will inevitably lead to a new round of excess.”

"To digest production capacity, the price of LED lighting must be lowered. If the price does not come down, the development of LED will have a big problem." Zhou Shuiming stressed.