Foreign monopoly market domestic auto parts companies need to refuel

As the foundation of vehicle development, the strength or weakness of parts and components companies is of utmost importance. According to the 2007-2010 "Automotive News" list of top 100 auto parts supplier suppliers in the world, in the past four years, the top 100 global rankings have continued to change, but there is still no Chinese parts supplier.

With sales of 47.3 billion euros, R&D input of 3.8 billion euros, and 3,800 global patents, this is a striking achievement Bosch Group is proud of in the past fiscal year. When people are still wondering why the world’s spare parts “crocodiles” are always doing so well, the Bosch Group’s 1000th Bosch auto repair station in the Chinese market quietly opened its doors in Changzhou, Jiangsu.

From the first to the 1000th home, and to the 2,000th home in 2015, the global sales strategy and marketing strategies of Bosch Automotive's professional repair stations have not been affected at all, as if the global economic crisis had not occurred at all, in the Bosch Group. With the increasing emphasis on China's auto market, a huge cake is on schedule as it had previously anticipated. From 2001 until now, in the field of spare parts competition, Bosch Group still has no Chinese opponents.

Annual average 20% market growth

China's auto parts and components are entering a fast-rising channel. Data show that in 2010 China's auto parts sales increased by about 44%, which is higher than the growth rate of vehicle sales of 37%, reaching 1.644 trillion yuan, and export sales revenue rose by 43% in 2010, a strong growth trend. In 2010, the sales revenue of China's service and parts after-sales market reached RMB 240 billion. By 2014, this figure will increase significantly to RMB 652 billion. It is expected that the scale value of China's auto parts industry in 2015 will reach 2.5 trillion yuan.

In the next five years, the domestic spare parts market will be expected to reach an average annual growth rate of 20%. However, this does not mean that Chinese auto parts can be compared with developed countries.

There are many factors that restrict the healthy and stable development of the market. On the one hand, most of the country’s tens of thousands of auto parts companies are small in size, with low product quality awareness and lack of competitiveness, and lack of mechanisms and incentives for corporate restructuring and integration. The annual sales revenue of most private auto parts companies is below 100 million yuan. Large-scale enterprises with incomes of more than 1 billion yuan are difficult to trace, and the market is too fragmented to have a complete supply system. In contrast, the degree of integration in foreign markets is relatively high, with about 5% of suppliers providing 80%-90% of the products in the entire market. The annual sales revenue of multinational corporations exceeds 10 billion US dollars. The gap is huge.

On the other hand, domestic auto parts companies lack the funds for self-development, high energy consumption, and low value-added products, and they are still in an embarrassing situation where the high-end technology of core auto parts and components is controlled by foreign parties. In 2009, China’s auto parts companies’ R&D investment accounted for approximately 1.4% of sales revenue, far below the average of 5% for multinational companies. Japan and South Korea companies spend 1 yuan to introduce technology, will spend 5-8 yuan for digestion and absorption and technological innovation, Chinese companies also spend 1 yuan to introduce technology, only use 0.07 yuan for digestion and absorption, resulting in domestic parts and components companies only in the traditional, The low added value has formed certain supporting scale advantages such as wheels, tires, glass, horns, mechanical steering brakes and so on. However, in terms of high added value, especially in electronic technology components such as electric steering, electronic braking, suspension systems, EMS engine control, etc., basically foreign wholly owned or joint venture enterprises control over 80% of the market share.

Foreign capital monopolizes the Chinese market

From the 2010 global top 100 auto parts suppliers, there is no single Chinese company, while the United States and Japan each occupy 30, 17 in Germany, 7 in France, and 4 in South Korea. Due to the fact that there is no domestic equity limit on the engine and parts joint venture, the foreign party is experiencing a transition from equity participation to holding, from joint venture to sole proprietorship, and from occupied market to monopoly market.

At this stage, China’s exports of spare parts are still dominated by low value-added products, sold to foreign countries with cheap advantages, and export prices are being rolled over each other, resulting in continuous growth in the number of exports, but the benefit growth is not obvious, and it is difficult to truly open the international market. According to customs statistics, Guangdong Province exported 480 million U.S. dollars worth of auto parts from January to April this year, an increase of 61.6% over the same period of last year, but exports of foreign-invested enterprises accounted for half of the country's total. At the same time, due to the rising prices of international markets such as steel, aluminum, and coal, as well as the depressing of export prices, not only has the company's profit margins been squeezed, but it has also caused the daily increase in foreign anti-dumping complaints and further increased the company's business risks. Therefore, it has become imminent to comprehensively increase the overall strength of China's spare parts enterprises.

The domestic auto parts market is still in the early stages of development. The market is uneven and not standardized. Three non-products flood the market, counterfeit and indiscriminate proliferation, and the integrity is not high, which restricts the healthy and stable development of the market to some extent. In terms of long-term development, the top priority for R&D, production, and marketing of auto parts is to find a way for Chinese companies to standardize and intensify, thus promoting the transformation of domestic firms from big to strong.