Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has a rapidly developing industrial market and increasing demand for products. It has gradually become one of the most active markets in the gas industry in the world. The demand for gas has continued to grow at a high speed, bringing historical significance and development opportunities to the gas industry. The five major international industrial gas giants Linde, Praxair Group, Air Liquide, Air Chemicals, Germany's Messer Group, and Japan's Dayang Nippon Acid Co., Ltd. have successively invested and established factories in China, and the competition in the domestic industrial gas market has intensified.
Panoramic Atlas of Industrial Gas Industry
Products that are gaseous under normal temperature and pressure are collectively referred to as industrial gas products, including oxygen, nitrogen, argon, hydrogen, helium, methane, carbon dioxide, acetylene, propane, neon, krypton, argon, xenon, Chlorine, carbon monoxide, etc. Industrial gases are usually classified as Class 2 compressed gas and liquefied gas in the national standard "Classification and Marking of Commonly Used Hazardous Chemicals" (GB13690-1992).
The upstream of the industrial gas industry includes air and industrial waste gas raw materials, basic chemical raw material industry, gas separation equipment manufacturing industry, etc., among which the most technical content is the gas separation equipment (air separation equipment, including Oxygen Generation Plant, Nitrogen Generation Plant, Argon Generation Plant) manufacturing industry. Sub-equipment companies include German Linde Company, French Air Liquide and other large multinational groups. It is worth noting that domestic air separation equipment manufacturers are actively transforming from manufacturing to manufacturing + service. Since 2003, manufacturers of air separation equipment and core units led by Hangyang have actively explored gas outsourcing business. Different from the periodicity of equipment sales, the gas business can bring stable operating cash flow to the company, and after getting rid of the burden of depreciation, the profitability has been significantly improved, which is a typical "cash cow" business.
The downstream applications of industrial gas include two major areas, namely, the bulk concentrated gas market and the emerging decentralized retail market. In the bulk centralized gas market, customers use a huge amount of a single gas, such as oxygen-enriched combustion of oxygen for steel and non-ferrous metal smelting; in the emerging decentralized retail market, customers have relatively small demand for a single gas, and there are many types of gas, such as In the VLSI wafer manufacturing process, there are more than 450 process steps, and about 50 different types of gases are used.