Industrials Author:Boying Ji Apr 03, 2023 01:36 PM (GMT+8)

The automation of warehousing is a key breakthrough in improving logistics efficiency

logistics

The automation of warehousing is a key breakthrough in improving logistics efficiency

Logistics is an important infrastructure for national economic development. In recent years, the total amount of domestic logistics has steadily increased. However, it can be judged from the proportion of logistics costs in GDP that China's logistics efficiency is far below the international level. According to the data of Jingdong Logistics Research Institute, at present, the penetration rate of intelligent equipment in the domestic warehousing industry is not high, and about 49.17% of enterprises still do not use warehousing and logistics automation equipment.

According to the statistics of the Toubao Research Institute, the scale of China's smart warehousing market in 2021 will be CNY 114.6 billion. Considering the continuous deepening of smart technology and the increasing demand for logistics industry scale and storage link cost reduction and efficiency increase, it is expected that my coChinaart warehousing logistics market will grow by 2022. The scale is about CNY 135.7 billion, reaching CNY 266.5 billion in 2026. In terms of competition pattern, due to the late start of domestic intelligent warehousing and logistics, the scale of domestic industry manufacturers is small, presenting a "small and scattered" competition pattern, so domestic manufacturers are expected to benefit from the industry's high β effect to start high-quality growth.

Background

For logistics efficiency, from 2010 to 2021, the total logistics cost/GDP dropped from 17.4% to 14.6% in China. According to CSCMP data, US logistics costs/GDP will be 8% in 2021, the highest level since 2008. Taking into account the differences in the industrial structure of China and the United States (the proportion of China's manufacturing industry is higher, and the proportion of the US service industry is higher), we compare the added value of the domestic service industry/GDP with the total cost of domestic logistics/GDP in 2010-2021, and we can find that in general, with the increase of the proportion of the service industry, the logistics cost level has a downward trend, but the marginal effect of the increase in the proportion of the service industry on logistics cost shows a decreasing trend (the added value of the service industry/GDP increased by 1.6%/1.0% in 2016/2019, logistics cost/GDP decreased by 1.1%/0.1%).

Since 2020, the epidemic has impacted the service industry, and its impact on logistics costs has further weakened. In this context, an important reason for the slight decline in the proportion of logistics costs in GDP is the improvement in operational efficiency brought about by the automation of the logistics supply chain. Since warehousing and logistics are an important part of production and trading, and warehousing and logistics costs are also an important part of the total logistics cost, we believe that with the accelerated transformation of warehousing and logistics links to automation and intelligence, the total logistics cost/GDP is expected to break through the past five years The plateau period continued the downward trend.

Benefiting from the rapid growth of the logistics industry and the increasing demand for cost reduction and efficiency enhancement in the warehousing sector, the market size will increase from 71.25 billion yuan in 2017 to 114.55 billion yuan in 2021, with a CAGR of 12.6%. However, the penetration rate of the equipment reflects that the integration of intelligent warehousing and logistics in many fields is insufficient. With the further upgrade of the smart warehousing industry, the development of the smart warehousing industry is expected to accelerate. It is estimated that the CAGR will reach 18.4% in 2021-2026.

Market Players in China: The domestic market is fully competitive and has no absolute leader

Overseas enterprises have obvious first-mover advantages and strong comprehensive competitiveness. Developed countries such as Europe, the United States and Japan have earlier applied logistics automation. With long-term technology accumulation, overseas companies have first-mover advantages in brand awareness, hardware and software technology, and industry experience, and have formed a relatively high level in many industries. market share.

From the perspective of revenue scale, Daifuku of Japan ranked first with US$4.39 billion in revenue, Dematic of the United States ranked second with US$4.299 billion, and Schaeffer of Germany ranked third with US$3.732 billion. And Daifuku, Dematic, and SSI SCHAEFER have also deployed in the Chinese market earlier, and have reached cooperation with many manufacturing companies in China, especially in sub-sectors such as semiconductors, which have formed certain brand advantages.

Intelligent warehousing and logistics belong to the development field strongly supported by the national macro policy, and the market competition is full. From the perspective of industry concentration, according to the statistics of Toubao Research Institute, in 2021, CR10, a local manufacturer in the domestic smart storage industry, will account for 14.1%, and CR5 will account for 8.4%.

From the perspective of revenue scale, the operating income of Nuoli shares in 2021 will be 5.887 billion yuan, which is far from the 4.39 billion US dollars in revenue of the world's leading company Daifuku. From the perspective of development, domestic local warehousing and logistics service providers are relatively lacking in general contracting and integration service capabilities for large projects. Although the orders in hand in the field of downstream customers continue to grow, no matter from the perspective of product services or industry experience and market share, the competitiveness of local smart storage companies is not very prominent, and they are still in the early stage of competitive growth.