According to relevant data, in June 2024, China's heavy-duty truck market sold about 74,000 vehicles (invoicing basis, including exports and new energy vehicles), a month-on-month decrease of 5% and a year-on-year decrease of 14%.
On June 28, the commissioning ceremony for the domestic semi-steel tire technical transformation project of General Science and the Thailand Phase II project was held on the same day. General Manager Cheng Jinyuan and General Manager of overseas company Gu Yahong unveiled the products in Wuxi, China and Rayong, Thailand respectively. This important moment marks the accelerated release of GS's high-performance, green semi-steel tire high-quality production capacity, and achieves a new leap in high-quality development.
In 2024, while the overall development of the tire industry in Shandong Province has slowed down, the tire industry in Jiangsu Province has ushered in an explosion in production capacity. According to incomplete statistics, seven major tire projects will be put into production or planned to be built in 2024 alone, with a total investment of nearly 20 billion yuan. We have sorted out the specific progress of the project and found that Jiangsu is becoming a hot spot for domestic tire investment.
According to data released by the General Administration of Customs, in May 2024, China's new pneumatic rubber tire exports were 750,000 tons, 56.38 million units, and 13.04854 billion yuan, the monthly growth rates were 0.5%, 4.8% and 2.1% respectively compared with the same period last year. From January to May 2024, China's cumulative exports of new pneumatic rubber tires reached 3.5 million tons, 265.93 million tires and 61.72911 billion yuan, an increase of 4.3%, 9.5% and 6.0% respectively compared with the same period last year.
Recently, rubber prices have once again broken through the high point in early April, approaching 16,000 yuan/ton. Part of this is due to supply and demand, but on the other hand, does it mean that natural rubber may break out of the ten-year cycle and start a global rise?
As the world's third largest automobile market after China and the United States, India's tire industry has developed rapidly in recent years. Leading companies have begun to aim to replace Chinese tires and intensify their competition with Chinese brands.
As we all know, with the support of multiple favorable factors in 2023, tire companies basically made a lot of money last year, but this phenomenon no longer exists in 2024. Although China's tire sales at home and abroad are generally strong, the continued rise in raw material costs and export shipping costs, coupled with the weakness of the all-steel tire market, has pulled down the profit level of the tire industry from its high level in 2023. By the second quarter, tire factories had to step up cost management and make every effort to achieve their full-year profit targets.
Recently, at The Tire Cologne in Germany, Brand Finance, an international brand value evaluation consulting agency, released a list of the world's top 25 tire brands. Michelin remains the world's most valuable and strongest tire brand for the seventh consecutive year.
ERJ recently released the 2024 global rubber machinery industry performance report. The report said that in 2023, the global rubber machinery industry's sales rebounded strongly, rubber machinery orders were obviously concentrated on leading companies, industry concentration increased, and the strong became stronger. The global rubber machinery industry's investment confidence has grown and investment willingness has significantly increased. China's rubber machinery shines in the global rubber machinery rankings. China's Mesnac Co., Ltd. topped the list for the second consecutive year, with a large gap from the second place, marking that China has become a major rubber machinery country and a "quasi-powerful country." The market situation continues to be optimistic, China's rubber machinery industry faces unprecedented opportunities to achieve the goal of "bigger and stronger" and is expected to become a "powerful country" in rubber machinery in the next 3 to 5 years.