Aluminum alloy cable market will develop rapidly

Copper is an important strategic material and has always been an important raw material for producing copper core cables. The extensive use of copper cables and excessive reliance on copper cables have led to more than 60% of copper used in China's wire and cable industry.

The reporter learned from an aluminum alloy conductor R&D and smelting company in China that at present, most of the proven copper resources in China have been in-depth development. China’s copper reserves are about 26 million tons, and China’s actual copper consumption is about 5 million tons each year. Copper cable consumption accounts for about 70% of total copper consumption in China. 70% of copper concentrates are imported every year. If they do not depend on imports, China's copper resources can be used for up to 5 years.

It is reported that in order to meet the rapidly expanding domestic demand, Chinese companies have invested in the development of overseas copper resources. At present, the world’s top ten mining giants control nearly 75% of the world’s mine production, and their resources are highly monopolized. As the pricing discourse is not in China, the cost of copper imported from China has risen sharply. In this regard, the industry told reporters: "From the import of copper concentrate smelting, the domestic smelting companies lose one to two thousand yuan per ton of copper."

The reporter learned from the interview that the excessive demand for wire and cable products in China caused the reduction of copper resources, and the price of copper rose in succession, making the wire and cable industry feel unprecedented pressure. In the coming years, the smart grid, nuclear power, railways, airports, construction, and home appliance industries will flourish, and the demand for wire and cable products will also grow rapidly. The market demand for wire and cable still has huge room for growth.

On the one hand, it is highly dependent on copper cables, and there is a large market demand. On the one hand, there is a shortage of copper resources, prices are soaring, and the cost is greatly increased. China, on the other hand, is a large aluminum resource country and has abundant resource reserves of about 2.7 billion tons. How to meet the rapidly growing domestic market demand with limited copper resources? Experts told the reporter: Research and development of aluminum cable products with high technical content and excellent performance, replacing copper with aluminum is the only way to break the bottleneck.

According to report, in recent years, China has made unremitting efforts to replace copper with aluminum. After many years of scientific and technological research, the company has successfully developed aluminum alloy cables, and has achieved a major technological breakthrough in the replacement of copper with aluminum, both in electrical and mechanical properties.

The aluminum alloy cable adopts a high-tech new-type conductor aluminum alloy power cable, which is different from the traditional cable production technology and technology. Compared with the copper cable, the safe current-carrying capacity, conductivity and safety, conductor resistivity, especially The cut-off flow is equal to or even better than the traditional copper cable, which makes up for the deficiencies of the hard pure aluminum as a cable conductor, and solves the major technical problems that the aluminum alloy cable has failed to solve in terms of safety performance, electrical performance, and mechanical performance.

People in the industry generally believe that compared with the traditional copper core cable, the alloy cable is lighter and more flexible under the premise of conductive performance and copper, completely changing the previous mechanical strength of pure aluminum cable, low fatigue resistance and easy joints Disadvantages such as accidents have ensured the cable's continued stability under long-term overload and overheating conditions. In addition, it also compensates for the defects such as memory effect and high rebound performance of traditional copper cables, and reduces line losses.

Industry insiders pointed out: In the United States, France, Canada and other developed countries in Europe and America, aluminum alloy wires account for as high as 90% of all cable usage. In China, although the aluminum alloy cable has just started, it has developed rapidly and has maintained an annual growth rate of 3-5 times in recent years. It is expected that China's aluminum alloy cable market will develop rapidly in the next five years, forming a market size of more than 200 billion yuan. The market demand outlook is very promising.