In 1960, American scientist Theodore Maiman successfully produced the world’s first laser – ruby laser. In 1961, China’s first ruby laser was born in Changchun Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since then, “Laser” has grown all the way to expand its territory in the application field and become an important force in the high-tech field. The laser market of our country as a whole started relatively late and experienced a metamorphosis from following to running and then to realizing the lead in some fields. However, as domestic enterprises break through the core laser technology, realize the large-scale production of laser and core optical devices, and promote the reduction of optical raw material cost, the capacity of domestic laser equipment shows explosive growth.
In the past ten golden years, the scale of China’s laser industry has increased by more than 10 times, and the industrial laser application market has also increased by more than 10 times. Both the production capacity and the industry scale are in the stage of rapid growth. In 2020, China’s laser industry overcame the impact of the international trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic, and achieved increased income in spite of adversity, becoming the most powerful, dynamic and safest country in the global economic development. In 2020, the market scale of Chinese laser products was 106.5 billion yuan, breaking through the billions of yuan mark for the first time, with a year-on-year growth of about 15.4%, and the growth rate was faster than that of the previous year. The year 2020 has become a landmark turning point year for China’s laser industry, and China’s laser smoothly enters the second golden period. In the next 20 years, with the optimization and improvement of the international environment, the timely landing of domestic supportive policies, the rapid growth of laser enterprises, the comprehensive coverage of laser technology application, the continuous breakthrough of common key technologies, as well as the establishment of a complete industrial chain and a complete industrial cluster, China is expected to become the world’s leading laser intelligent manufacturing power, laser and photoelectric industry to achieve a trillion output value is not a dream.
The international environment is conducive to China’s development. In the past two years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the adjustment of foreign economic policies of Western countries represented by the United States, the structural defects of some domestic industrial chains that rely on imported finished products have been exposed and many domestic manufacturers have encountered difficulties, which have brought a sense of crisis to many domestic manufacturers and greatly affected the macroeconomic environment. However, foreign supply chains have shrunk, many enterprises have stopped production, and the timely supply of medical supplies and daily necessities in these countries is subject to structural constraints. The domestic supply chain plays an alternative role to some extent, which brings additional increment to laser industry, especially laser processing field.
The epidemic has not changed the development pattern of China’s laser industry. As a global manufacturing center, China has a relatively complete industrial chain foundation and broad market space. “Pooling resources to accomplish big things” is an important embodiment of the advantages of the state system and governance system. While timely, actively and effectively controlling the epidemic, China has actively adjusted the layout, stimulated domestic demand, and steadily developed the economy. A large number of new application scenarios of laser technology have appeared. On the other hand, due to trade friction, import tax points increase, so that China has to accelerate the transfer of more key components and key products with policy risks to domestic manufacturing, which also brings more opportunities to the laser industry as an advanced manufacturing method. Major domestic enterprises have turned their attention to the domestic market, stimulating domestic demand, promoting the development of domestic industries in various fields, accelerating the process of localization substitution, and significantly improving the quality of substitution.
Since the Outline of the National Program for Medium and Long-term Scientific and Technological Development (2006-2020) was issued in 2006 and laser technology was listed as the frontier technology for the development of the country’s key development for the first time, policies supporting the development of the laser industry have been gradually introduced. For example, key policy documents such as the “12th Five-Year Plan for the Development of National Strategic Emerging Industries” in 2012, the “13th Five-Year Plan” Special Plan for Scientific and Technological Innovation in the Field of Advanced Manufacturing Technology in 2017, and the “Action Plan for the Development of Basic Electronic Components Industry (2021-2023)” in 2021 all provide important support for technological progress and industrial development of the laser industry . In recent years, various provinces and cities have made precise deployment to promote the development of laser
Market demand leads the development of laser industry In the current national series of industrial structure adjustment and transformation process, laser industry has broad market prospects. China is the only country in the world that has all 41 industrial categories, 191 middle categories and 525 small categories of industry. It can produce all industrial products from clothing, shoes and socks to aerospace, from raw materials and minerals to industrial machinery. Our manufacturing industry base has strong, industrial chain is complete. Manufacturing accounted for more than one third of China’s GDP in 2019. The “poor structure” offers a market opportunity for the development of Chinese laser industry. At the same time, our country has a strong manufacturing industry chain, also has the Internet new economy represented by Shenzhen. The huge OEM industry space and the demand for laser processing make our country become the largest laser application market in the world. At present, the proportion of laser application in manufacturing industry, especially equipment manufacturing industry, is low, only 30%. The proportion of laser application in the equipment manufacturing industry in the United States, Japan and Germany all exceeds 40%, among which Germany is as high as 46%, 16 percentage points higher than China. So the application space is large, will promote the rapid development of laser. At present, laser processing equipment plays a key role in promoting the upgrading of traditional industries. A group of laser processing equipment enterprises rely on innovative processing technology and excellent equipment quality to find enough orders to grow rapidly in the market of new and old driving forces. In addition, some manufacturing companies have tasted the sweetness of upgrading and development, no longer satisfied with domestic vertical integration, and actively explore the cross-border acquisition of foreign high-quality laser enterprise resources, and plan to enter the field of precision processing. In the past 10 years, laser processing station has been an important antenna for equipment enterprises to provide extended services. Through the development of position services, it can timely meet various processing needs and enhance customer viscosity. Nowadays, more and more multifunctional large-scale equipment has been developed and applied to rail transit, aerospace, shipbuilding and other industries. It is expected that from 2020, all kinds of cloud manufacturing platforms based on industrial Internet will gradually release their value, laser processing stations will play a greater role under the support of cloud manufacturing platforms, and along the “Belt and Road” into Southeast Asia, the Middle East, South America and other regions. At present, the world is gradually entering the 5G era. With the continuous launch of 5G mobile phones and new smart wearable products, the capital expenditure of customers in the consumer electronics industry has increased significantly, and the development of the industry has accelerated significantly. The application of laser processing and automation in the consumer electronics industry has been deepening. The laser industry has achieved rapid growth in brittle material processing, special material welding, PCB processing and other special fields. The new application scenarios and processing equipment demand brought by 5G technology have brought huge business opportunities for laser equipment providers. In the next 20 years, laser industry will get rapid development and go straight to one trillion output value
Post time: Mar-17-2023