vintagepennsenator30| Sany Heavy Energy: The flexible intelligent manufacturing production line will be rolled off the line in 3 hours. 1 Wind turbines rely on cost control capabilities to "attack cities and seize land"| company research

Financial Associated Press, May 12 (Reporter Xiao Lianghua) the "internal volume" of wind power is still continuing, and the gross profit margins of the whole machine enterprises continue to shrink, among which the better performance of Sany Energy (688349)Vintagepennsenator30.SH) although it fell nearly 8% from the same period last year, it still reached 15.45%. By contrast, 002202.SZ and 601615.SH had a gross profit margin of 6.41 per cent and 300772.SZ 12.51 per cent in 2023.

Under the mourning, how can Sany guarantee a relatively passable gross profit margin? A reporter from the Financial Associated Press visited Sany's Beijing factory today and learned that blades, motors and other parts with relatively high costs have been self-made, and flexible intelligent construction has continuously infiltrated to improve production efficiency, which is the reason why Sany's cost control ability is better than that of the same industry. "at present, all links have achieved a high degree of mechanized production, man-machine cooperation with a high degree of automation. One production line can produce 5 models of products at the same time, realizing the flexible production of 3.X-15MW products with a fan off the line every 3 hours, and the production process data can be recorded and traced back. " Peng Xu, deputy general manager of Sany heavy Energy, told the Financial Associated Press.

Based on this, industry data show that in the past five years, Sany's domestic industry has been ranked from 10th to 5th and 4th on land. In 2023, with the general decline in industry profit margins, Sany's revenue and net profit both increased by more than 20% compared with the same period last year.

Haifeng has a broad market prospect, at present, the wind power industry has more overseas market opportunities. Like many companies in the industry, Sany will be able to put the two seas strategy in an important position in 2024 and seek new breakthroughs in the globalization strategy. "now there are many overseas opportunities. The company has set up an overseas team in the form of 'China + local', introduced a group of outstanding talents in the global wind power industry, and has set up an overseas marketing team of more than 200 people, basically covering major wind power markets around the world." Zhou Likai, secretary of Sany, said that other departments of the company have also set up overseas specialized teams or equipped with specialized overseas talents to support overseas business development.

It takes only 3 hours to build a fan flexibly.

In the Sany heavy Energy Industrial Park, a reporter from the Financial Associated Press saw that on the engine room and hub production line, a variety of customized AGV shuttled between them, with very few workshop workers, dozens of processes basically achieved automated production.

Machinery manufacturing enterprises are usually fixed-point manufacturing, while Sany can establish a leading flexible production line, a production process automatically distributes materials through AGV, a variety of industrial robots and aircraft robots work in an orderly manner driven by data, a production line can achieve mixed production, including 3-15MW products, models and equipment can be switched freely, and the conversion can be completed in 10 seconds. As a result, the efficiency of the company has been greatly improved, the production capacity of the same production line is 2 times that of the industry, and the personnel only need 30% of the industry. " Peng Xu said.

He further said that the fan belongs to the "big guy" and needs to run for 25 years after it is put into use, and many links have very high requirements for precision. "for example, in the process of installing blades on the fan hub, the robot intelligent operation has been used, and the precision has been significantly improved. For example, the yaw bearing is 4-5 meters long, and a large number of visual cameras are installed on the company's equipment to achieve precision manufacturing through data acquisition. Originally, 10 people were needed in this link, but now there is no one, which is twice as efficient as manual work. "

The blade with a length of more than 100 meters is a difficulty in automatic and intelligent production. Fan enterprises at home and abroad have a headache about it, and Sany energy still does not give up, breaking through the intelligent manufacturing technology of the key process of the blade step by step to improve the production efficiency and quality of the blade. "for example, the automatic noodle grinding process can reduce staff by 80% and reduce grinding dust by 65%. Automatic double-head stud installation process, improve operation efficiency by 30%, improve tightening quality. Peng Xu said.

In addition, through international cooperation and development, the company introduces the scientific research resources of the world's top companies, collects the best parts with the best performance-to-price ratio in the world, and constantly consolidates the advantages of the company's fan products. Peng Xu said that the company's units adopt platform design, cyclic iterative design of key components, and self-design and production of large components such as blades and generators, which can better control quality, optimize costs, and select suppliers of gearboxes and transmissions. Matching continues to improve.

It is reported that the cost of blades and motors in the wind power unit accounts for about 40%, and other whole machine enterprises mostly purchase from the outside.

Prior to this, the company released the wind power machine intelligent manufacturing 2.0 factory and intelligent operation and maintenance service platform. The intelligent manufacturing 2.0 factory uses a highly integrated job island to increase the assembly efficiency of the whole machine by 25% through a highly compatible automatic positioning system and simulation-based assembly path optimization. The incoming material control, process inspection, quality traceability and other upstream and downstream process monitoring are highly integrated to achieve a quality on-line rate of 100%. Based on deep learning quality judgment, the accuracy is raised to 99.9%.

Peng Xu said that with the continuous innovation and iteration of intelligent manufacturing technology, at present, at Sany's Beijing plant, the company can get off the line of a fan in three hours, and the working environment of workers is more comfortable.

The sudden rise of market share

With the potential tapping and upgrading of flexible intelligent manufacturing, Sany can gradually emerge in this highly competitive industry. With the results of various enterprises last year, Sany Energy (688349.SH) has become the most profitable wind power manufacturer.

Domestic wind power prices continued to decline in 2023, but after a brief trough in 2022, China's newly installed wind power returned to the rising trend last year, an increase of about 60% over the same period last year, a record high.

However, the winning price has gone down all the way, and among the four leading wind power units, only Sany has been able to achieve a year-on-year increase in net profit of 2.007 billion yuan for the whole year. At the same time, the net profit of Sany is almost the sum of the profits of the other three enterprises.

At the same time, thanks to the pre-research and reserve of large megawatt fan technology, coupled with the optimization of intelligent manufacturing and supply chain system, Sany can achieve rapid development in the era of parity and low electricity cost, and its market share increases steadily.

According to the statistics of the Wind Energy Professional Committee of the China Renewable Energy Association, the company added a new hoisting capacity of 7.41GW in 2023 (company statistics is 7.76GW), an increase of 64% over the same period last year, and its domestic market share was 9.3%, an increase of 0.2% over the same period last year. In 2023, the company's new order is 14.1GW, a record high, achieving rapid growth; in 2023, the company's external sales capacity is 7.24GW; by the end of 2023, the company's on-hand order is 15.89GW.

Just five years ago, the company's annual installed capacity was only 0.7GW, less than 3% of the total 26.8GW installed that year, ranking only 10th. "in recent years, whether it is the industry rush to install the trend, or the pullback after the decline of subsidies, the company's installed capacity growth has exceeded the industry growth." Peng Xu said

On the product side, the company also made many breakthroughs in 2023. Among them, SI-230100 wind turbine successfully won the bid for a wind power project in Heilongjiang, which is the first land wind project in the country to use 10MW units with single unit capacity in batch. The company's onshore wind turbine research and development focus has been laid out to 15MW.

The diameter of the impeller of the company's wind turbine has been expanded to 230m, and the first SY112 wind turbine blade will be off-line in April 2023 and connected to the grid in August.

Steady progress in the strategy of the two seas

From 2020 to 2021, the domestic market is busy with the rush to install on land and at sea, and the domestic manufacturers are mainly busy with the delivery of the domestic market. Coupled with the high price in the domestic market, it is not a good opportunity for fans to go to sea. After 2022, with the large-scale and parity, the main domestic manufacturers have more and more obvious advantages in price and delivery efficiency, coupled with the intensification of competition in the domestic market, they have made great efforts to distribute overseas markets.

Sany energy has also increased the pace of going out to sea. In 2023, the company's overseas revenue increased by a large margin, with an income of 310 million yuan. It was realized that the wind power equipment in Central and South Asia went to sea. The gross profit margin of overseas sales was 22.07%, which was 5.25% higher than that at home.

However, in terms of overseas business revenue, there is still a big gap between Sany and other enterprises that have arranged overseas earlier, such as Vision Energy and Jinfeng Technology.

According to the wind energy professional committee of the China Renewable Energy Association, the export volume of Chinese brand wind turbines in 2023 was 4.7 million kilowatts, accounting for less than 5 per cent of production capacity. "now the wind power market has expanded, and the scope of China's target market has expanded. Competitiveness has improved. With the ability to go out and the conditions to go out, there will be a substantial increase in export volume in the future. " Qin Haiyan, secretary-general of wind energy professional committee of China Renewable Energy Association, said.

According to Dong Secretary Zhou Likai, so far, the company has set up more than 200 overseas marketing teams, overseas teams have basically covered the world's major wind power markets. "it is mainly divided into Asia, Europe, Central and East Africa, Latin America and other regions, all of which contain rich market opportunities. Through its own staff and recruitment of localized talents, the company sets up regional teams to obtain business opportunities clues in a timely manner. Develop local customers and resources."

In terms of Haifeng, "the company's first offshore 10MW wind turbine product is offline in Dongying Wind Power equipment Industry Base in Shandong Province. At present, a full range of 8.5MW-16MW offshore wind turbine products have been formed, and the company will strive to achieve a breakthrough in Haifeng sales as soon as possible." The relevant person in charge of the company told the Financial Associated Press.

It is worth paying attention to that the development of Fengguang hydrogen storage ammonia integration project is becoming a new exploration direction for wind power enterprises, and Sany has also tried it. The company disclosed the announcement on overseas Investment and Development of New Business on November 15, 2023, and plans to invest 6.5 billion yuan to build a Sany Changling hydrogen storage digital demonstration project.

"at present, the project is in steady progress." The relevant person in charge of the company said that from the perspective of the industrial prospect, the Fengguang hydrogen storage and ammonia integration project has a good market prospect, but the capital investment on the chemical side is relatively large, and the digestion of products also depends on the demand of the market, and the company will advance cautiously and increase the pace after running through the business model.

(article sourceVintagepennsenator30: financial Union)