Aluminum electrolytic capacitor industry chain combing: into a new era

The Chinese economy is entering a period of transition, and manufacturing upgrades have become an inevitable trend. Its core driving force is the acceleration of urbanization and the transformation of the economic structure, which is mainly driven by domestic demand, and the resulting international transfer of industries. The speeding up of urbanization will drive the development of transportation infrastructure, electronic information industry and new energy industry. The development of these emerging areas will expand the demand for new materials, will no longer be confined to the traditional industries and low value-added products in the past, and huge growth space has opened up.

While aluminum electrolytic capacitors have steadily grown in the traditional consumer electronics field, their application areas have expanded in many emerging fields such as energy-saving lamps, inverters, and new energy sources along with structural transformation and technological advancement. The earthquake in Japan will accelerate the transfer of relevant industrial chains to China, and domestic related companies may benefit significantly.

We estimate that under the neutral assumption, the demand for electrode foil in China accounted for 60% in 2013, which corresponds to a scale of 54,000 tons (a contract of 217 million square meters), a compound growth rate of 20.5%, and a market capacity of approximately 17.3 billion yuan.

Electrolyte is an important capacitor chemical. It is the highest technical barrier in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. The product differentiation is obvious; and the capacitor chemical accounted for only 6-8% of the downstream cost, but it has a large impact on performance. Customers develop collaboratively, so customers are more sticky.

Electrolytic paper is used as the carrier for the electrolyte, which together with the electrolyte constitutes the cathode of the electrolytic capacitor. It has demanding physical requirements, high chemical purity, and excellent electrical properties. At present, high-end high-pressure electrolytes still need to be imported from Japan.