Analyses on the Demand Status of Valves in China

A valve is a kind of products which has very low profit margins and fierce market competition. The distribution of the valve market mainly bases on the construction of the project, and large valve users are the petrochemical industry, electric power sector, metallurgical sector, chemical industry and urban construction sector. Gate valves, globe valves and check valves with API standard are mainly used in the petrochemical industry. High-temperature valves, high-pressure valves, globe valves, check valves, safety valves, part of the low-pressure butterfly valves and gate valves are mainly used in the electric power sector. Stainless steel gate valves, globe valves, check valves are mainly used in the chemical industry. Low-pressure butterfly valves with large diameters, oxygen globe valves, oxygen ball valves are mainly used in the metallurgical industry. Gate valves with large diameters are mainly used for the urban water pipelines. Centerline type butterfly valves are mainly used in the urban apartment construction. Metal-sealed butterfly valves are mainly used for the urban heating system. There are large applications of valves in the water treatment industry and the most widely used valves are low-pressure butterfly valves, gate valves and check valves. It is understood that there are about 2,000 valve enterprises which have certain scales in the current valve market and most of them distribute in the central China such as Jiangsu province and and Zhejiang province. As the technical requirements of the valve products are relatively low, the competition among valve enterprises are extremely fierce.

China's valve products face a good opportunity for development. With the petroleum development gradually transferring to the mainland and offshore oil field as well as the electric power industry developing from the 300,000 kilowatts thermal power to the more than 300,000 kilowatts thermal power, hydropower and nuclear power, the performance and parameter of valve products should also be improved to adapt to the rapid changes in the equipment applications. The urban construction systems generally change to the environment-friendly and energy-efficient development, and the low-pressure iron valves mainly used in the past are gradually replaced with the environmental rubber slab valves, balance valves, metal-sealed butterfly valves and centerline type sealed butterfly valves. The oil and gas transportation pipes are gradually developing to the pipeline systems, which in turn requires a lot of flat gate valves and ball valves. Another manifestation of energy development is energy saving. From the perspective of energy conservation, steam hydrophobic valves should be developed with subcritical and supercritical high parameters.
 
With the large-scale development of the power station, there is great demand for large diameter safety valves, high pressures safety valves, pressure relief valves and quick opening and closing valves. The complete engineering requires the supply of valves to change from a single variety to the multispecies and multistandard development. There is an obvious trend that all the valves of a project will be supplied by a valve manufacturer in the near future.