1\ Glass Fiber

Driven by the fast growing wind market and thermoplastic market, domestic demand for glass fiber keeps strong by September, offering good turnover and profit. But price went down since then by 5-10%, when the rush of wind turbine installation met an end. In 2016, some leading enterprises launched their overseas factories, and some introduced automated production lines, to further answer local demand and lower long-term production cost.

2\ Carbon Fiber

Quite a few new production lines were launched in 2016, when higher-level carbon fiber (T700/T800/T1000) came to scale production. Competition became fiercer, with new investment and players constantly joining. Four markets (Automotive, Railways, Construction and Energy) are mostly hungry for high-performance carbon fiber. However, domestic products are still lagged far-behind by those imported. Sales price keeps low and pressures keeps strong.

3\ Processes

Filament winding, pultrusion and molding compression are well grasped; autoclave, AFP and ATL are gradually learned and applied to high-end markets; hand layup, prepreg and normal RTM need to further optimized to meet the challenges from scale production; 3D printing is new but needs further observation.