Broad Market but Little Headway?

HIMALAYAL - SHANGHAI - CHINA

The fast growth in electric demand enlarges the scale of electric investment and drives the expansion of dry-type transformer industry. Different from oil-immersed transformer, it is not necessary to immerse dry-type transformer to dissipate the heat but use the air to cool. Hence, the structure is simple and it is easy to maintain. The maintenance work is reduced greatly thanks to high fire retardancy and reliability of dry-type transformer.    

The dry-type transformer, an essential equipment in the power distribution network, mostly relies on air flow to cool or is equipped with drought fan. It is often used in high-rise buildings, toll stations and local lighting sites.  

According to a report of market demand forecast and investment strategy planning on China transformer manufacturing industry (2017-2022) by Forward Business and Intelligence Company, The market opportunity for transformer industry has come with the increasing of electric investments. The total sales has been up steadily, exceeding ¥ 400bn. Also, dry-power transformer has broad market.    


The Chinese dry-type transformer has been applied in many fields, especially electronic and electric sector. 70% of available dry-type transformers in the market belongs to domestic brands but its market share is less than 30%. The European and American brands occupy the most of market.  

In terms of small capacity field, owning to low technology content, domestic companies start to get involved, resulting in capacity saturation and fierce competition. However, in the high capacity field, our companies fail to dominate the market due to insufficient technology capability and outdated marketing principles.  

Besides, dry-type transformer belongs to labor-intensive industry and most of the work needs to be done by workers. However, there was a lack of relevant training in the power industry. According to insiders, the percent of pass in the Chinese dry-type transformer industry is lower than any other industry. The material cost of dry-type transformer is so high that part of companies has poor risk resistance capacity. Some companies even just renovate old transformers and sell them as new ones.  

The low profit margin of dry-type transformer industry is another prominent problem. For instance, the profit margin of dry-type transformer under 500kV is less than 3%. Customers tend to purchase low-price products but low price indicates that manufacturers have not more profit to improve the product quality.