Domestic instruments are expected to rise

The laboratory equipment market in China has always been under the monopoly of foreign brands. The limitation of the “bottleneck” of domestically-made experimental instruments has been in the awkward position, and the high-end instrument market has been delisted from the general conventional instrument field. With low added value, although the market is large, it is profitable. In terms of domestic market demand, the localized environment has not yet been fundamentally improved, the conditions for the great development of the industry have not yet matured, and the breakthrough in innovation has sparked a bright future. It is not yet a case of failure. Not all companies have made progress in industrialization and technological breakthroughs. In addition, the industry's restructuring is difficult, and companies with international competitiveness are still gestating.

In 2007, the industry had such a set of data: China's instrument market is the main analytical instrument, there are more than 90 kinds of analytical instruments being applied in the society, and China can produce only more than 20 kinds of products, less than 1/3 of the total. There are about 80 kinds of special instruments for life sciences. There are only 6 kinds of special instrument products for life sciences in China, which are far from the market demand. The gap in the number of gaps will inevitably lead to an imbalance in profits. In 2009, the overall import and export of the instrument industry showed a negative growth. Imports of analytical instruments kept growing, and exports decreased year-on-year. Among them, the import volume of experimental analysis instruments was nearly 2.7 billion U.S. dollars, and the export value was 600 million U.S. dollars; the industrial process analysis equipment imported 448 million U.S. dollars and the export value was 338 million U.S. dollars.

These figures show that domestic equipment is indeed a long way to go in order to reverse the current situation. Take heavy head item analysis instruments, for example, most domestic high-end analytical instruments currently in use are still imported. Due to the high technical requirements of high-end analytical instruments, long research and development cycles, and large investment in research and development, it is a huge challenge for domestic companies. Although high-tech enterprises such as Concentration Technology, General Analysis, Skyray Instruments, East-West Electronics, Beijing Nuoke, Xuedilong, Hebei Xianhe have emerged in recent years, but domestic companies still lack the high-end products. The ability to innovate, the lack of proprietary technology, and the severe lack of R&D investment, the lack of systematic work and long-term continuity of work, and the lack of ability to develop high-end analytical instruments for domestic companies. Scientific research institutes and universities have poor access to scientific research results and industries. In the short term, they cannot produce high-end analytical instruments that meet the needs of the domestic market.

However, the overall market for analytical instruments in China is changing. Since 2009, in the face of the impact of the world financial crisis, the increase in production and sales of the instrumentation industry in China has fallen sharply. However, with the joint efforts of the entire industry, it has come out of the trough and achieved a stable Recovery and development. “There are three unexpected developments in the instrumentation industry in 2009,” said Yu Jiacheng, a special advisor to China Instrument and Meter Industry Association. “The recovery is less than expected, profits have risen faster than expected, and local companies have become more resilient than expected.”

Last year, in the environment where the overall growth of the analytical instrument industry slowed down and exports decreased year-on-year, a few leading companies still maintained a strong momentum of development. Companies such as Concentration Technology, Skyray Instruments, and Beijing-based Naqa, bucked the trend in the global downturn of the analytical and inspection industry, and achieved gratifying results with sales growth rates of 44%, 30%, and 24.4%, respectively.

In particular, Concentration Technology still has the absolute advantage to consolidate the market share ranking first. This was mainly because they seized the opportunity of the country and governments at all levels to attach importance to the development of instrumentation, attached great importance to scientific and technological innovation, continuously strengthened investment in R&D, and developed analytical and measuring instruments with independent intellectual property rights and adapted to market requirements. Widely used and achieved significant social and economic benefits.

The situation that high-end analytical instruments have occupied for almost 100% of imports for a long time has forced domestic analytical instrument companies to change their existing R&D production models, and has gradually begun to develop high-end analytical instruments. Constantly optimized market environment, and the entry of more foreign analytical instrument companies, the competition in the domestic analytical instrument market will become more intense. Therefore, domestic analytical instrument manufacturers must face up to the crisis and opportunities in the coexistence of the market environment, and continue to innovate and increase investment in the development of science and technology on the road to success, to the world-class level.

It is true that the gap between domestic instruments and foreign brands in life sciences is still very large, but science is the world and belongs to us humanity, and we hope that more people will make more high-quality experiments. At the same time, the development of our domestic equipment also needs to be redoubled.