So far, the output value of China's cable industry has exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, becoming the world's largest market, accounting for more than 30% of the global market. The wire and cable industry has more than 9000 enterprises. However, China's cable enterprises are generally small, with the largest output value of only about 10 billion yuan. There are 19 large enterprises in the industry, accounting for only about 11% of the market share. Because most of the enterprises in the industry are small in scale and have poor innovation ability, the products can only fight a price war in low-end areas, resulting in the overall average profit margin of the industry less than 5%. In particular, the pure buyer's market has led to serious bad debts and bad debts of cable enterprises, and a round of triangular debt crisis has erupted from time to time. It can be said that most cable enterprises in China are struggling in the fierce market competition. It is precisely in this industrial situation that since 2006, a new type of cable conductor material technology, namely conductor aluminum alloy technology and aluminum alloy cable products, has been brought into the Chinese market by two American companies. After that, China's aluminum alloy cable market was gradually detonated.

If the Chinese cable market, which is fiercely competitive by nearly 10000 enterprises, is a red sea, then aluminum alloy cables, which use aluminum alloy instead of copper as conductor, are increasingly becoming a vast blue sea in the development of China's cable industry.

The latest forecast data shows that in the next 5 to 10 years, even if the use level of aluminum alloy cables in China only reaches the current international average level (30%), it will quickly form a huge market of 300 billion yuan per year. At present, this is considered to be the virgin land of China's cable market that needs to be developed urgently, and it is a real blue ocean.

The invention of aluminum alloy cable is a major technical breakthrough in conductor materials

Aluminum alloy cable originated from the North American market. In the 1960s and 1970s, as the earliest inventor of aluminum alloy cable, American Southern Cable began to vigorously promote aluminum alloy cable in the North American market as a cable product that uses aluminum alloy to replace copper or pure aluminum as conductor. Aluminum alloy cables are mainly used in airport, military base, office building, residence, hotel, supermarket, college, stadium, hospital, factory building and other construction projects. The United States has successfully applied aluminum alloy cables for more than 50 years without any safety accidents.

As far as the actual performance is concerned, although the conductivity of aluminum alloy cable is not improved, its physical and mechanical properties such as bending, compressive creep and corrosion resistance are greatly improved. Compared with copper cable, aluminum alloy cable has incomparable advantages in weight, price and engineering installation. In other words, under the premise of the same electrical performance and better mechanical performance, aluminum alloy cables are more economical and widely used.

However, aluminum alloy cable has high technology content and large investment in production equipment, which requires mature material formula, production process and talents. The production of conductor aluminum alloy materials requires patented formula, self smelting and casting to ensure the quality of alloy materials. The cable production also requires multiple toughening and other production process requirements, and requires specialized technology, mature process, specialized production and management personnel, and specialized production equipment to be complete, so that qualified alloy cable products can be produced. The industry threshold is high, and it is difficult for manufacturers who are not professional, have no strength and mature production conditions to participate.

Aluminum alloy cable manufacturing is highly professional, equipment requirements are high, and technology and process are difficult

All copper cables start from conductor processing. As copper conductor is a single metal material, the material quality is easy to control. However, due to different conductor materials, the production equipment, production technology and process of aluminum alloy cables are very different from those of traditional copper cables. It is necessary to input equipment and technology for conductor alloy smelting and continuous casting and rolling of conductor alloy materials, as well as special equipment, technology and production process for cable production of aluminum alloy cables. The quality control of the production of aluminum alloy cables starts from the melting of alloy materials, and forms qualified conductor aluminum alloy rods after casting and rolling under equipment guarantee, strict process and technical control. The quality assurance of aluminum alloy rods is the precondition for the quality assurance of aluminum alloy cables. If the conductor aluminum alloy rods cannot be produced by ourselves, the quality of the rods cannot be controlled at all, and the quality of the aluminum alloy cables produced cannot be discussed. Compared with traditional cable production, alloy cable production requires higher and more advanced equipment, technology and process. At present, domestic non professional aluminum alloy cable manufacturers do not have these conditions and capabilities.

There are major cognitive errors in the application of domestic aluminum alloy cables

Copper cable is made of a single metal material. After decades of application, the application technology of copper cable and accessories such as connecting terminals have become very mature. As the conductor of aluminum alloy cable is aluminum alloy material, there is no aluminum alloy copper connection terminal and other supporting accessories with the same performance as the alloy cable in China. At present, copper aluminum transition terminals used to connect aluminum cables and the so-called high conductivity micro alloy copper transition terminals (also known as aluminum alloy terminals, but actually confused with the concept) just to improve the conductivity of terminals are used in the industry. In fact, these application plans are extremely wrong. Aluminum alloy cable is a new type of conductor material invented to improve the physical, mechanical, compressive and creep properties of pure aluminum cable, and there are potential safety hazards in use. Now, aluminum alloy cable is used in connection, and aluminum or other so-called non-conductive aluminum alloys that are inconsistent with the performance of aluminum alloy cable are used as the connection, so all the defects of aluminum or non-conductive aluminum alloys still exist, and the potential safety hazards still exist. As we all know, the potential safety hazard of cable in application basically lies in the connection. At present, due to the existence of aluminum or so-called non-conductive aluminum alloy in connection of aluminum alloy cables, the advantages and values of aluminum alloy cables cannot be brought into play and reflected at all. What is the difference between aluminum cables and aluminum cables? The truly correct and perfect connection scheme is to use aluminum alloy copper connection terminals with the same performance as aluminum alloy cables as connection accessories.

How to treat different cable prices and choose cables more wisely

According to the analysis of insiders, the price difference of copper cable is mainly caused by the different raw materials used in the production process. The main raw materials for producing copper cables are electrolytic copper, insulating materials and sheathing materials. At present, electrolytic copper is about 50000 yuan per ton in the raw material market, while the recovered miscellaneous copper and recycled copper are only about 40000 yuan per ton; The price of qualified insulating materials and sheathing materials is 8000 yuan per ton? 10000 yuan, while the price of defective products is only 4000 yuan per ton? 5000 yuan, a wide price difference. In addition, insufficient conductor section, good or bad copper doping, and insufficient cable length are also important reasons for price difference. The qualified cable products are produced according to the national standards, while non-standard products or substandard products are not only fake raw materials, but also the cable section and length do not meet the national standards. The price of aluminum alloy cable products is different because the main raw materials of qualified aluminum alloy cables are not only in line with the chemical composition of the international AA-8000 series aluminum alloy conductor materials and the electrical performance requirements of the alloy conductor conductivity, but also in line with the mechanical performance requirements of aluminum alloy conductors such as elongation, conductor flexibility, tensile strength, and creep resistance. The qualified aluminum alloy cable has the characteristics that the whole series of products are cross-linked polyethylene insulation and flame retardant sheath of various flame retardant grades, the sheath does not contain lead, cadmium and other heavy metals, and the aluminum alloy belt is interlocked and armored.

It is understood that at present, only two American companies have factories in China and few domestic professional manufacturers with alloy cable intellectual property technology and equipment can produce qualified alloy cables in China. The cost of qualified aluminum alloy conductor is similar to that of high-quality electrolytic copper. The cost advantage of aluminum alloy cable over copper cable mainly lies in that the same weight material can produce cables of different lengths. The conductor material cost of unqualified so-called alloy cables is basically the cost of aluminum materials. The conductor materials of unqualified alloy cables in the market are unqualified at first. Secondly, because the manufacturer does not have the core formula technology, mature alloy cable production technology and production process, the alloy cable products produced cannot meet the requirements of qualified alloy cables. It can be said that they are not really aluminum alloy cables at all. Such fake and counterfeit products can only be sold at a low price. Some domestic manufacturers even sell aluminum cables as alloy cables. Although it is a bad act to deceive users, at least the electrical performance of aluminum cables in use is better than that of selling fake and counterfeit aluminum alloy cables. Therefore, due to the fact that the products of aluminum alloy cables are not the same thing at all and the differences are too large, there must be price differences. By comparison, it is not difficult for consumers to see that there are differences in the sales prices of finished cable products, which are mainly caused by the quality of the products, whether the products are produced according to the standards or not, whether the products have quality, mature production technology and production process guarantees, and whether the products are really aluminum alloy cables. Unqualified copper cables bring potential safety hazards, and unqualified aluminum alloy cables will bring more potential safety hazards. In fact, unqualified alloy cables are not as good as aluminum cables, because the electrical performance of unqualified alloy cables cannot reach the electrical performance level of aluminum due to technology, process and other reasons, and the improvement of physical and mechanical properties is even more impossible. For economic reasons, it is better to select unqualified aluminum alloy cables than to directly select aluminum cables, because aluminum cables are more economical and valuable than unqualified aluminum alloy cables.