Asian Metal: Firstly, please give us an introduction of your company.

Mr. Pan: Founded in March 2006, Shenzhen Jutai Industry Co., Ltd. is a time-honored enterprise specializing in production of electronic auxiliary materials and the sole producer capable of producing all kinds of such products in Chinese mainland. With similar product types to Cookson Group, we mainly produce PCB tin products, water-based solder flux, PCB agent, electronic plug-in unit tin products, crest flux/cleaning agent, SMT solder paste and red glue, as well as others. Now we own an annual production capacity of around 3,500 tons of tin products (solder ball, tin anode bar, tin bar and solder paste), around 2,500 tons of water-based solder flux and around 1,500 tons of other chemicals. Our Jutai Industry Park is registered and set up in Guangdong Huizhou Honghai New Materials Base. Now the park is under construction and expected to go into operation in 2021.

Asian Metal: Which industries are your major clients from? Does the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 make any impacts?

Mr. Pan: We focus on tin products and related products, with major downstream customers coming from PCB industry and its downstream electronics industry and metal electroplating industry. As China imposed control and export orders plunged after the outbreak of COVID-19 around the Spring Festival, most plants, especially small and medium enterprises, were out of production before last April. Thus, we suffered a sharp decline in orders. Supported by improving situation, our orders skyrocketed as the vast majority of enterprises began to clear the backlog of orders from this May, so we returned to normal production soon after. However, after successive delivery of concluded orders, tin solder plants record discontinuous production with insufficient orders as failure in controlling the pandemic at overseas results in sluggish consumption in 2020. But the situation becomes better now.

Asian Metal: How does the tin solder industry survive amid falling treatment charges?

Mr. Pan: Treatment charges in tin solder industry keep moving down due to simple processing process, low access threshold, limited new customers and fierce competition for existing customers. As South China sees fierce competition for a huge number of tin solder producers now, producers in production suffer extremely low profits at present. Considering our actual situation and market development, I believe diversification is the only way for us to go forward.

Asian Metal: How do you keep expanding in the oversupplied tin solder industry?

Mr. Pan: As mentioned earlier, low access threshold results in increasing tin solder producers and oversupply. Market economy will surely not allow longstanding vicious competition and blind competition and force enterprises with poor product quality, relatively high prices and low price-performance ratio to withdraw from the market. Meanwhile, the increasingly severe requirements of environmental protection and safety supervision authorities will absolutely lead to production termination of some disqualified enterprises. Our plant runs at a lower cost in our own industry park and owns environmental protection, safety supervision and all other necessary permits in the provincial-level chemical park. In addition, we keep developing products, lowering cost and optimizing service. Thus, we can keep expanding while the market solves surplus production capacity.

Asian Metal: What are your opinions about the tin solder market in Q1 by taking current export market and domestic downstream demand into account?

Mr. Pan: The United States adopts trade war strategy to many countries after the overseas outbreak of COVID-19, so the export orders are not optimistic in Q4. Demand basically goes back to the normal level in Chinese market, but a large number of end users are from overseas, which will inevitably affect the production and consumption of Chinese market players. Besides, the tin solder industry is under competition and industry regulation now. Based on our countermeasures, we enrich product types to satisfy diversified demand of downstream clients and maximize our product advantages to increase product price-performance ratio, lower production cost and give a play to marginal benefit advantage. This Q1 will be a great challenge to the tin solder industry. Amid the fierce competition under limited deals, the tin solder companies face big survival difficulties, especially before the Spring Festival holidays as the companies will endure demand and fund pressures.

Asian Metal: How do you think about the treatment charges in tin solder industry and tin prices in Q1?

Mr. Pan: I believe that treatment charges in tin solder industry will surely rise in a rational manner supported by survival the fittest and industry regulation, but it takes time and patience rather than comes true immediately. We are working towards this goal. I reckon that the tin solder industry will still suffer fierce competition in Q1 and the TCs for tin solder products will keep low in Q1 and even in the first half of the year, unless the industry would see structural changes. Tin prices are expected to hover at around RMB155,000/t (USD23,932/t) in Q1 due to inflation resulting from quantitative easing of global financial currencies and tight raw material supply.

Asian Metal: What are your ideas about new demand in tin solder industry?

Mr. Pan: 5G, new energy and other new economic growth points are all directions of new customers and development of tin solder industry in the future, but demand from such new growth points will experience a developing and growing process rather than soar in a short period. We also take demand from such markets and customers into consideration in the construction of the new industry park. In my opinion, new communication industry and new energy industry would probably be two strong growth points in terms of demand for tin solder.

Asian Metal: Thank you for your wonderful comments. Wish your company a prosperous future!