The LED packaging material market pattern will be settled! The small factory lost money "difficult to spend the day", the big factory "grab the land"

As the saying goes, life is like a play, and everything in the play is because of love. In fact, the LED industry is more like a big show, and the "drama" of price war, expansion, bankruptcy, mergers and acquisitions, and resource integration is always on the go.

As an indispensable part of the entire LED industry chain, LED packaging materials have experienced another round of impact in the market in recent years.

Among them, for the field of LED phosphors and LED glues, everyone heard the most is the topic of "selling the white powder, earning the money to sell cabbage", "the price has bottomed out", "business failure" and other topics. From price wars to patent wars to market segments, the LED packaging materials industry has also been tempered by the market.

In October last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Rare Earth Industry Development Plan (2016-2020)", which proposed the development of high-performance rare earth luminescent materials and devices for high-performance rare earth luminescent materials, which can meet high-energy-density excitation light sources, full-spectrum illumination and wide-color The field HD display application needs; develop high-performance bio-agricultural lighting materials and devices to meet the needs of photophysiological processes such as plant photosynthesis, and to demonstrate applications in agricultural greenhouses and plant factories.

For phosphor companies, aside from price wars, development to high-end markets and market segments may also be a good survival opportunity.

As we all know, since 2016, the LED industry chain, such as raw material price hikes, chip price hikes, package price hikes, and lighting price hikes, are all rising prices. In 2017, the price hike is still continuing.

Then, this year's phosphor market will be affected by the price hike and the price rises? How is the market trend of the phosphor powder this year?

Phosphor market is still in the stage of competition

Liu Ronghui, director of the Rare Earth Luminescence Materials Division

In 2017, the LED packaging factory will continue to develop towards the centralization of “bigger and stronger, stronger”. Nearly all first-line packaging plants in China have expansion plans, and the overall packaging scale will continue to grow.

Correspondingly, the demand for phosphor powder in the market will continue to increase in 2017, but as the profits of LED phosphors decline and prices fall, small factories are shut down, and phosphor companies are also moving toward concentration.

In 2016, the price rise of the LED industry continued, the prices of raw materials were rising, and the price of chips, packaging and lighting was rising. Most of the price of phosphors has already bottomed out, and there is no profit margin. However, no phosphors have proposed any increase. There are two main reasons for the price:

First, the performance of traditional phosphors has entered a bottleneck period, and the performance of various products has become more and more similar. Phosphors are difficult to bring creative benefits to packaging companies, and the price increase is insufficient. Second, phosphor companies are in the period of consolidation failure, and companies are more cautious about the loss of market share that may result in price increases.

It can be understood that in the next 2-3 years, the LED phosphor market pattern will be basically finalized.

Compared with other manufacturers, the advantage of researching rare earths is that they belong to central enterprises, have deep research and development accumulation and talent advantages, as well as undertake the cutting-edge technology exploration and major technical research tasks in the field of rare earth materials in the country, and have the innate advantages of developing new high-end. For example, research and development in China is almost the first to realize the industrialization of various LED phosphors. At present, it is still the only high-end fluoride phosphor company that can be supplied in batches.

In addition, there are advantages in researching rare earth core rare earth raw materials. For example, the price of LuAG green phosphor is very sensitive to the fluctuation of rare earth raw material prices. Once the price of rare earth raw materials fluctuates, research can guarantee supply and price safety at any time, which is also the case of international packaging manufacturers. Increase the important reasons for researching rare earth purchases.

Up to now, the research and development of rare earth high-end fluoride red phosphors has occupied half of the country. The technical level of violet-excited full-spectrum phosphors, ultra-high color gamut phosphors and infrared phosphors is in line with the international level. Cooperate with major domestic and foreign manufacturers to jointly promote technological advancement in the industry.

Yantai Hilde General Manager

As far as the current situation is concerned, various phosphor companies will not continue to cut prices. Due to rising raw material prices, some companies may raise prices in the first half of the year. Nowadays, many small manufacturers are basically losing money, so they will cooperate with large manufacturers as much as possible in the choice of customers.

Many packaged customer manufacturers have chosen to work with large manufacturers, which will be a tough loss for small factories.

Of course, if all companies are rapidly expanding their production in the first half of the year, it is hard to say whether they will cut prices or raise prices. Now every phosphor company has a relatively thin profit, and there are only a few that survive in the market.

In fact, regardless of the profit of each phosphor company, I believe sales will still grow. On the one hand, with the gradual popularization of LEDs, the demand for phosphors has also increased; on the other hand, because the packaging manufacturers are expanding, the demand will also increase.

Hilde has always had a strong supply capacity. In the face of expansion of the packaging plant, we are also ready to supply at any time. This year, we will continue to focus on the field of lighting and TV backlighting, especially in the application of headlight lighting, from 3000K to 8000K, we have made corresponding preparation strategies.

This year, from the application requirements of phosphors, packaging manufacturers' requirements for product quality will increase. As a result, the cost of the product will increase, especially in the application of headlights and 4K/8K TVs (high-end backlights).

As far as the overall LED market is concerned, 2017 is still relatively optimistic. As the price rises, the market will gradually return to rationality. Various manufacturers have begun to set aside price wars and concentrate on quality.

Let’s hear what the packaging company says.

Sima De Marketing Director Zhang Luhua

The excitation efficiency of the phosphor and the uniformity of the powder are all important. At present, the quality of phosphors on the market is uneven, and there are still some problems. Compared with some international manufacturers, there are still some gaps. At present, Smect's packaging products use phosphors both domestically and abroad.

Wang Gaiyang, deputy general manager of Hongli Zhihui

Nowadays, the requirements for phosphors in packaged products are the degree of dispersion, the degree of concentration, the precision of the particles after the glue is applied, and the heat resistance requirements are relatively high.

At present, the material performance gap between first-line phosphor companies at home and abroad is getting smaller and smaller. With the progress of localization, the technical differences will not be great.

For packaged products, this year's requirements for phosphor materials are light-emitting efficiency, because the development speed of chip technology is gradually slowing down, and now the light source products are increasingly demanding heat resistance. Phosphors need to have improved performance in terms of light extraction efficiency and heat resistance.