What are the domestic liquid chromatograph manufacturers and what is the market situation?

Market analysis of domestic liquid chromatograph

I. Overall situation of HPLC market

1, overview

The development of modern science and technology and industry has promoted the rapid development of complex sample separation, analysis and purification instruments represented by chromatographic instruments, and various newer and more applicable chromatographic technologies and instruments have emerged continuously. According to incomplete statistics, the sales of liquid chromatography instruments alone account for nearly 20% of the total sales of analytical instruments in the world, and the total global sales amount to more than one billion dollars every year. (Quoted from Thomas Lee and other editors:)

China needs 5000-6000 sets of liquid chromatograph every year. In terms of sales volume, the market share of domestic liquid chromatography instruments is less than 10%. (According to the incomplete statistics of some manufacturers' customer lists and other materials, there is subjective speculation, for reference only! )

2. Main HPLC brands

(1) Imported brands

Waters, Agilent, Shimadzu, American Science System (SSI), Dionex, PE(PerkinElmer), Varian, acquired by Agilent), Thermo Fisher Scientific, Hitachi (represented by Hitachi and Mei Tian), Japanese Spectrophotometer (represented by Jasco and Huayang Ecotech), Germany Knauf, Beckman, South Korea Yonglin, Australia GBC, gilson, etc.

(2) Domestic brands (including domestic assembly)

Dalian Park Rongsu, Saizhi Technology (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd., Beifen Ruili, Leibotec (Beijing), Beijing Innovation Tongheng, Beijing Wenfen, Beijing Dongxi Electronics, Suzhou Shimadzu, Shanghai Mei Tian, Shanghai Wufeng, Shanghai Tongwei, Nanjing Jack, Zhejiang R&F, etc.

(3) Add some manufacturers that produce special detectors.

Alltech, SEDERE, Eurosep, ESA, SofTA, SFD, PL (Polymer Laboratories, acquired by Varian), Shodex, Metrohm, etc.

Second, the bottleneck of domestic HPLC development

1. Background: After decades of development, the HPLC market has entered a relatively stable period, and the market has undergone restructuring and integration. Gradually, a few brands appeared and occupied most of the market share. Due to the very large shipment, the production cost is further reduced. If there is no revolutionary new technology, it is conceivable that it is very difficult for domestic HPLC to enter this field and share a piece of it.

2. Technology: Domestic HPLC manufacturers started late, and the strength of R&D is weak. Most of them stay in the stage of imitating foreign musical instruments.

3. Vicious competition: the target market of domestic HPLC is located in the low-end market, and the price is relatively cheap, while many core components have to be imported, with high cost and small profit margin. On this basis, the price war is getting worse and worse. How much profit can you make by investing in R&D?

4. Mentality: Domestic HPLC manufacturers lack the determination to compete with imported brands, "dare not think, and will not think" about how to compete with imported brands, only thinking about how to seize some market blind spots and "make a fortune". (This idea comes from the reply of Pediatrics! )

Third, opportunities for the development of domestic high performance liquid chromatography

1, Price: The biggest competitiveness of domestic HPLC is that it is cheaper than imported HPLC, which is attributed to several aspects:

On the issue of RMB exchange rate (1), I personally feel that the value of RMB is underestimated, and the China government has been trying to keep the RMB exchange rate stable, which has opened the price gap between domestic instruments and imported instruments to a certain extent, which is a strong protection for our domestic instrument market.

(2) The domestic labor force is relatively cheap.

(3) Domestic parts are cheaper.

2. Policy inclination:

(1) The state spared no effort to support high-tech industries.

(2) Domestic brands can replace imported brands to some extent. In some areas, the state has certain policy support, and domestic HPLC should be used as much as possible when it can be replaced.

3. Macro-environment: China has made great achievements in reform and opening up, the economic environment is getting better and better, and the domestic demand is increasing year by year, which provides fertile soil for the development of analytical instruments.

4. Some foreign enterprises value China's huge market potential and are willing to cooperate with some domestic enterprises, providing good technical support for the development of China Instruments.

Fourth, some suggestions for domestic HPLC manufacturers

1. Pay attention to R&D investment: How much of the annual profits of domestic HPLC manufacturers can be invested in the R&D field? I'm not optimistic about this number. I have no great wisdom, no great perseverance and no great ideals. Which instrument company is willing to invest its profits in illusory research and development, and I don't know when it will produce results? However, I think increasing R&D investment is the only way to revitalize domestic musical instruments. Although the results may not be seen in a short time, a certain amount of investment can at least form a basic R&D environment, and when the opportunity comes, we can seize it. If there is no basic R&D environment, the country doesn't know where to start! For an example outside the circle, why did Lenovo acquire IBM notebook business instead of Haier, Shenzhou or Founder? Opportunities only favor prepared enterprises.

2. Pay attention to the improvement of imitation ability: At present, most domestic instrument manufacturers are at the level of imitation. Although imitation is not a long-term solution, it is the most convenient way to complete primitive accumulation. I think there is nothing wrong at this stage. Take it! Foreign instrument manufacturers attach great importance to research and development, but imitation is also their strength. For example, since Waters produced the world's first UPLC in 2004, Agilent, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Jasco, Shimadzu, Hitachi, SSI, Dionex, Knauer and PE have successively launched similar products in just five years. Just this year, Agilent also launched 1290 Infinity(UHPLC) to push this war to the peak, which belongs to the category of imitation. I also expect domestic LC manufacturers to launch their own UPLC products.

3. Pay attention to finding partners: Some powerful and skilled imported brand HPLC manufacturers are not selling well in the world, and they are eager to change this situation by taking advantage of the big environment in China. In this case, the threshold for finding some powerful HPLC manufacturers to cooperate is not particularly high. I hope some domestic instrument companies can find some excellent partners as Mei Tian bought Hitachi. (Of course, some domestic HPLC manufacturers have also cooperated closely with some foreign companies that produce professional detectors. )

4. Pay attention to the stability of product quality: the quality response of domestic brands of HPLC is generally not as good as that of imported brands, and unqualified products often flow into the market, which is very harmful. First of all, it has an impact on the brand. Even if the user is replaced with a new machine, the user will have a bad impression on the brand and will also cause a crisis of trust in domestic instruments; Secondly, the profit is reduced, the freight for replacing unqualified products, the toll for engineers to go to the site for installation and debugging many times, and the increase in labor costs make the already meager profit of domestic liquid phase even more meager; It also has an impact on the enthusiasm of sales staff. Many users of HPLC have repeated requirements. In this case, users will basically not buy this brand of instruments, which indirectly leads to the loss of sales staff. This may be one of the incentives for domestic instrument manufacturers to retain excellent sales staff. Therefore, it is very important to control the quality of products. Another thing I need to explain is that at present, the technical transparency of conventional HPLC is very high, and we also have a good industrial base in China. Many technically difficult core components are imported as a whole, which is no different from the upstream suppliers selected by some imported brands, but why hasn't there been a big breakthrough in quality? Especially in some places where there is no technical difficulty, the quality is not up, which is worth thinking about!

5. Pay attention to the development of application methods: there is an old saying in the instrument industry that third-rate instrument companies do the market, second-rate instrument companies do the service, and first-class instrument companies do the method. I don't absolutely agree with this statement, but the development of application methods is undoubtedly important to our instrument industry. I have encountered such a case. A company's HPLC sales have not been very ideal, but they have grasped the European Union's limited requirements for phthalate plasticizers in electronic products and toys, and developed a set of relatively perfect application methods for HPLC determination of plasticizers (the authoritative method is GC-MS), and the sales situation has been greatly improved.

6. Pay attention to the sales link: the sales link is the terminal link, and I don't need to say more about its importance. A big problem for domestic HPLC manufacturers is that they can't keep sales staff. The main reasons are: first, the domestic HPLC market share is not high, the sales are difficult, and the energy input is disproportionate to the return; Secondly, the system of low basic salary and high commission, the income gap of sales staff is too big, which is a great test for some just-started sales staff, and few can survive. I hope that domestic instrument manufacturers can give more support, more trust and more patience to the new sales staff.

7. Pay attention to after-sales service: The problem of after-sales service is also an obstacle to the development of domestic HPLC. In order to reduce the price of products and improve the market competitiveness, domestic HPLC manufacturers invest relatively little in after-sales service, and there are still some gains in the short term, but in the long run, they will lose people's hearts and lose more than they gain.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) conclusion

With the rapid development of analytical instruments all over the world, domestic HPLC has made great progress in recent years, and I believe it will get better and better in the future.