Industry Hot News ——Issue 074, 8 Jul. 2022

[Textile] The market of circular knitting machines will continue to present domestic downturn and overseas upturn.
Recently, the president companies of the Circular Knitting Machine Industry Branch under China Textile Machinery Association convened a meeting, in which the data show that in 2021, the annual operation of the circular knitting machine industry was “good in the first half of year and poor in the second half of year”, with the sales volume up more than 20% year-on-year; in the first quarter of this year, the sales volume of circular knitting machines was basically the same as that of the previous year, and the overseas market had a good performance, with the export amount up 21% year-on-year. Bangladesh became China’s largest export market of circular knitting machines; since the second quarter, the situation of COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the domestic circular knitting machine industry chain.
[Artificial Intelligence] The trend of machine substitution is accelerating, and related industries are speeding up.
Under the trend of “machine substitution”, the intelligent robot industry has new changes. It is predicted that in 2030, 400 million jobs in the world will be replaced by automated robots, and the market space will reach RMB 120 trillion on the basis of RMB 300,000 per Optimus; machine vision will be one of the fastest growing industries. It is estimated that the compound growth rate of sales in China’s machine vision industry will reach 27.15% from 2020 to 2023, and the sales will reach RMB 29.6 billion by 2023.
Key points: [According to the 14th Five-Year Plan for Robot Industry Development, the average annual growth rate of the robot industry’s operating income exceeds 20%, and the cumulative growth rate has doubled in five years. The revenue and density of robot segments, such as artificial intelligence (AI), will double in the next five years.]
[New Energy] MAHLE Powertrain develops cutting-edge technology and replaces diesel with ammonia in heavy ICE vehicles.
MAHLE Powertrain cooperated with Clean Air Power and University of Nottingham to develop the technology of replacing diesel with ammonia in internal combustion engines, especially in heavy vehicles. The project aims to determine the feasibility of using ammonia to accelerate the transition of these industries that are difficult to realize electrification to zero-carbon fuel, and the research results will be published in early 2023.
Key points: [Non-highway industries such as mining, quarrying and construction have high requirements for energy and its utilization rate, and they are often in an environment far away from the power grid, which makes it difficult to realize electrification; therefore, it has considerable potential to explore other power sources such as ammonia.]
[Battery] The new generation of domestic flow battery technology was exported to a developed country for the first time, and the flow battery regained market attention.
Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and Belgian Cordeel signed a license contract for new generation of flow battery technology to jointly promote the popularization and application of this technology in Europe; flow battery belongs to storage battery, which is composed of electric reactor unit, electrolyte, electrolyte storage and supply unit, etc. It is applied to power generation side, transmission and distribution side and user side for energy storage. All-vanadium flow battery has high maturity and fast commercialization process. The Dalian 200MW/800MWh Energy Storage & Peak Shaving Power Station, the largest flow battery energy storage project in the world, was officially put into operation in the grid.
Key points: [There are about 20 institutions engaged in R&D and industrialization of flow battery technology at home and abroad, including Tsinghua University, Central South University, Sumitomo Electric Company of Japan, Invinity of the UK, etc. The related technologies of Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics are at the forefront of the world.]
[Semiconductor] ABF carrier boards are in short supply, and industry giants compete for layout.
Driven by chips with great computing power, the demand for ABF carrier boards continues to rise, and the industry growth rate will reach 53% in 2022. Due to the high technical threshold, long certification cycle, limited raw materials, limited capacity growth in the short term, and the market in short supply, chip packaging and manufacturing companies are targeting the future production capacity, and carrier board leaders such as Unimicron, Kinsus, Nanya Circuit, Ibiden, are planning to expand production.
Key points: [China, as the main terminal market, has a high demand for carrier boards, but it still focuses on low-end products; with the support of national policies and government funds, Fastprint, Shennan Circuits and other industry leaders are intensifying R&D and expanding production layout.]

The above information is obtained from public media and is for reference only.