Economic Report of the 21st Century

Recently, the largest overseas acquisition of China's aluminium industry has landed. Zhongwang USA has signed an acquisition agreement with Eli Aluminum Co., Ltd., the world's top research and development manufacturer of high-end aluminium calendering products. The transaction will be conducted in accordance with the value of Eli Aluminum Co., Ltd. $2.33 billion.

According to public data, Eli is the top three aluminium calendering company in the world, its technology and products are in the first echelon in the world, and also one of the main suppliers of Airbus and Boeing. Its factories are mainly located in the United States, Germany and Zhenjiang, China.

In recent years, Zhongwang has also laid out its own aluminium calendering project in Tianjin. According to reports, the annual design capacity of the first phase of the plant is 1.8 million tons, the capacity of the first production line is 600,000 tons, and the capacity of the second production line is 1.2 million tons.

This "Touch Smart Manufacturing - 2016 China Manufacturing Value Discovery Tour" came to Zhongwang Aluminum Calendering Base in Tianjin, Tianjin Zhongwang Aluminum Co., Ltd. According to Li Qingjiang, Tianjin Zhongwang Deputy General Manager, the first production line plant construction and equipment installation have been completed, the optimization and commissioning of the core equipment is under way, and has entered the trial production stage, and is providing small batches of trial order products for potential customers.

Intelligent Aluminum Calendering Production

According to Li Qingjiang, all the large-scale equipment used in the production line of aluminium calender in Tianjin factories are imported from abroad. Most of the cooperation among the equipment depends on its own automatic control system, and the degree of intellectualization is the highest in the world.

"Our aluminium calendering equipment is the most advanced in the world at present," said Li Qingjiang. "All of our warehousing equipment and process control system are imported from Germany, and the production line can run normally with only a few buttons pressed by workers."

Supported by highly automated production systems, the manpower used by factories is relatively reduced. In the production process of aluminium calendering material, the first step is to melt aluminium alloy by mixing raw aluminium with other metal elements. In this smelting workshop, only 40 workers operate the equipment in the huge workshop.

"Including alloy elements ratio, temperature control, waste collection and so on, all work according to the procedures set by the equipment. What the workers do is monitoring and simple operation," the workshop's director told reporters. "Such intellectualization not only improves the efficiency of work, but also reduces the production accidents caused by human misoperation."

The production process of aluminium calender includes many processes, such as casting, hot rolling, cold rolling, etc. The warehousing and material logistics equipment and system connecting each process are from Vollert, Germany.

Reporters in the interview saw that in the process of transportation and warehousing in different workshops, the automated warehousing system and robotic transportation system provided by this equipment have improved the efficiency of Zhongwang Tianjin.

At present, Tianjin Melting and Casting Workshop produces 2,670 mm wide aluminium alloy ingots, which is a record in China, while hot rolling workshop produces 4,300 mm wide aluminium alloy sheets, which is a record in Asia. Tianjin factory has also passed three quality management system certification at one time, and obtained management system certificates including aviation and automobile industry, which lays a foundation for products to enter high-end fields.

Technology is the key to aluminium calendering

In addition to the establishment of intelligent production line, the requirements of aluminium calendering project are very high. "At present, the mastery of aluminium calendering process in China's aluminium industry lags behind that of advanced countries in the world, which is also the difficulty that Zhongwang of Tianjin is trying to overcome." Guo Fuan, director of Tianjin Zhongwang Research and Development Center, told reporters.

Walking into Tianjin Zhongwang Hot Rolling Mill, the aluminium rolled sheet is on display at the gate. According to Li Qingjiang, this is the first plate that was successfully manufactured after the machine had just been assembled. "The people who came to debug the machine at that time also told us that this was the first successful example they saw in production." Li Qingjiang said.

Tianjin Zhongwang has successfully rolled and stretched out a number of aluminium alloy sheets in trial production, and planned to produce high-quality general-purpose products in the initial stage of commissioning, including truck roof, car outer panel skins and large oil tank trucks.

From the point of view of market demand, the market space of this industry is huge after obtaining the ability to produce aluminium calender in large quantities.

The analysis of the aluminium calendering market in the Boston Consulting Report shows that the main driving forces for the growth of China's market demand are transportation, packaging containers, electronic power and the aluminium foil industry for packaging. The report predicts that the demand for industrial aluminium calendering materials will continue to grow at an annual rate of 8% from 2016 to 2020, reaching the scale of about 15.99 million tons.

Li Qingjiang also told reporters that Tianjin's high-value-added aluminium calendering project is the largest and most complete single aluminium calendering production base in the world, which will provide high-quality and high-value-added aluminium calendering products for China and overseas markets and fill the gap in the domestic market in this regard.