Analysis of the Pattern of Major Competitive Enterprises in the Automotive Parts Forging Industry in 2023

In 2022, the Chinese automobile sales market initially declined and then rose. Despite facing strong short-term shocks in the supply chain of the automobile industry in the first half of the year, it quickly recovered in the second half of the year driven by the rapid growth of new energy vehicles. The cumulative sales for the year were 26.864 million units, a year-on-year increase of 2.1%, continuing the growth trend since 2021. Among them, the industry chain related to new energy vehicles is at a high level of vitality, and the localization rate of parts is high, driving the continuous increase in demand for automotive parts in the market. In 2022, the main business revenue of China's automotive parts industry increased by 3.63% year-on-year.

1. Overview of the Automotive Parts Forging Industry

Forging is one of the fundamental processes in metal processing. Forging refers to the processing method of producing forgings with a certain geometric size, shape, and quality by causing plastic deformation of the billet or ingot under the action of forging equipment and tools (molds). Forging processing can ensure the continuity of metal fiber structure, keep the fiber structure of the forging consistent with the shape of the forging, and ensure the integrity of the metal flow line, thereby ensuring that the workpiece has good mechanical properties and a longer service life. Therefore, forging is widely used in industries such as aerospace, automobiles, ships, machinery, weapons, petrochemical equipment, power, and metallurgy.

The automotive industry, as a pillar industry of the national economy of major industrial countries in the world today, dominates the development of forging technology and equipment. The development and progress of forging technology are basically centered around the development of the automotive industry. Since the 1980s, the entire automotive manufacturing industry has developed towards platformization, lightweight, and fuel saving. The main development trend of automotive component manufacturing has also changed accordingly: precision of parts blanks, reducing the processing steps before loading; Apply composite components to reduce the number of vehicle components; Reduce the number of molds and fixtures. The above trends have all promoted the development of precision forging technology. Although the use of precision forging technology has increased forging costs, it has reduced machining costs, greatly reducing overall costs. At present, precision forging technology has become the main direction of automotive component development, replacing cutting processing technology.

According to the deformation temperature, forging techniques can be classified as follows:

At present, precision forgings on automobiles are mainly concentrated in the transmission system, and transmission shaft components and gearbox components are typical automotive precision forgings.

Automobile component forging manufacturers will choose different forging technologies to process metal materials based on the requirements of the vehicle manufacturer for the components, such as the size, shape, structure, material strength, plasticity, and product accuracy of the processed workpiece. Due to the different forging technologies requiring different equipment to complete the processing, excellent forging manufacturers not only have solid technical accumulation and rich production experience, but also have made significant capital investment and equipped various forging equipment and related supporting equipment.

In the automotive industry chain, forging manufacturers generally serve as secondary and tertiary suppliers. After receiving the workpiece, customers also machine and assemble the workpiece into an assembly product, which is then delivered to the vehicle manufacturer for assembly. Therefore, forging manufacturers generally expand