Chemical grade silicon metal market forecasts positive in Q4
----Interview with Fei Wang General Manager Donghai Dongfang High-purity Electronic Material Co., Ltd.
Donghai Dongfang High-purity Electronic Material Co., Ltd. was established in 2006. In 2011, The company introduced the capital and advanced technology from Beijing Tongmei Crystal Technology Co., Ltd., the wholly-owned enterprise of NASDAQ listed company AXT in China, and reorganized into a Sino-US joint venture technology company with a registered capital of RMB31million. The company mainly focuses on production of high-purity arsenic and gallium arsenide for the second-generation semiconductor materials with an annual production capacity of 20t. The company launched pilot production at the end of 2014 and started full commercial production in 2015. The company has passed GDMS detection and analysis by EAG, AMK and other international and industrial authoritative testing institutions and could could reach level 7N stably. Since 2015, the company has supplied about dozens of 7N high purity arsenic to domestic market.
Asian Metal: Hello, Mr. Wang! Thank you very much for accepting the interview. Firstly, please briefly introduce the main business of Donghai Dongfang High-purity Electronic Material Co., Ltd. and your career experience.
Mr. Wang: Donghai Dongfang High Purity Electronic Materials Co., Ltd. was established in 2006 with a registered capital of RMB31million. It is a Sino-US joint venture covering an area of 26 acres and is located in the Industrial Park of Shuangdian Town, Donghai County. Our company focuses on the production and sales of high-quality and high-purity arsenic, and is committed to stably providing customers with high-quality, high-purity arsenic products. We have advanced high-purity arsenic production lines, high-clean production workshops, and adopt DCS automatic control system with a high degree of automation. It formed an annual production capacity of 20t of arsenic. Our company's high-purity arsenic products have been tested by authoritative testing organizations in the industry and proved by customers for long-term use. The quality level is domestically leading and not lower than the international level. Since the beginning of 2000, the domestic high-purity arsenic began a rapid development stage from laboratory production to large-scale production, and I myself was fortunate to enter the high-purity arsenic industry at this time. It also witnessed the twists and turns, difficulties, as well as improvement and development in the development of the industry. I am currently the general manager of Donghai Dongfang High Purity Electronic Materials Co., Ltd. I hope to further witness and even promote the development of our country's high-purity materials industry with industry experts, engineers and users, and provide material guarantees for the development of the national information semiconductor industry.
Asian Metal: What fields are main high-purity arsenic products applied to and which areas does the global demand mainly concentrate in?
Mr. Wang: High-purity arsenic is mainly used to synthesize compound semiconductor material gallium arsenide, and partly used in infrared glass manufacturing and semiconductor heavy doping industries. Therefore, the demand for high-purity arsenic is basically determined by the gallium arsenide market. Gallium arsenide is now widely used in the production of diodes, infrared emission tubes, lasers, and solar cells. It is playing an increasingly important role in the field of microelectronics, optoelectronics, military industry, aerospace industry, and computers. The global demand for high purity arsenic mainly concentrates in China, Taiwan China, Germany, Japan and South Korea.
Asian Metal: Does your company have export plans for high-purity arsenic?
Mr. Wang: With domestic attention and support to the information-based semiconductor industry, the domestic gallium arsenide market developed very rapidly in the past two years. The demand for high-purity arsenic is in a stage of rapid growth, and there is even a shortage of supply. Therefore, we still focus on ensuring the supply of domestic customers as the main goal, and on this basis, we will seek to develop the external market.
Asian Metal: As the main raw material of metal arsenic, what aspects do you pay attention to when you purchase?
Mr. Wang: Our company mainly concerns about the procurement of metal arsenic in aspects of the legality of the supplier, the integrity of the relevant qualification certificates for safety and environmental protection, the supplier's quality assurance ability and stability, and the supplier's scale and timely supply capability.
Asian Metal: What are the advantages of your high-purity arsenic in the production and sales process?
Mr. Wang: In terms of our company's high-purity arsenic production and sales advantages, the production technique is mature and stable. We adopt the industry's most recognized chlorinated distillation reduction method with the most mature technology, the most stable quality and the best purification effect. The entire production system is fully enclosed, free from external contamination, and has a good guarantee for safety. Meanwhile, by adopting full-process DCS automatic control, the production process control has a high degree of automation and precise control. In addition, with support from professional and experienced management team, we have accumulated rich experience in production and quality control after years' production. The sales advantage lies in the fact that the semiconductor industry has more requirements for quality than price sensitivity. Our company focuses more on the improvement and stability of product quality, which means winning by quality.
Asian Metal: If the consumption of high-purity arsenic would increase or not in the coming year?
Mr. Wang: Judging from the current market response, the demand of high-purity arsenic doesn't seem to have been affected by COVID-19 since early this year. On the contrary, with the improvement of the epidemic situation, the domestic demand for high-purity arsenic increased significantly. We attribute this to the increase in direct demand for infrared glass due to epidemic prevention requirements, and the epidemic and other related factors, which have led to part of the domestic supply chain. Transfer, and the expansion of gallium arsenide in some application areas such as communications and microwaves also contribute to the demand increase. But in any case, due to the impact of the epidemic and the deterioration of the international trade environment, the uncertainty of the global economic development situation increased, which will certainly have a certain negative impact on the development of the global semiconductor industry. On the whole, there will be a certain increase in high purity arsenic in the next year. However, with more strict and complete supervision system in fields of safety and environmental protection, some domestic high-purity arsenic companies with defective qualifications would fail to guarantee their supply. Therefore, we believe that the domestic high-purity arsenic may be in short supply in the next year.
Asian Metal: Finally, Mr. Wang, please share some your company's plans for the next three years.
Mr. Wang: Our company's plans for the next three years mainly follow two directions. First, we will keep focusing on the production and development of high-purity arsenic, through R&D and the introduction of new technologies, to ensure that the existing production is safer and more stable, and will continue to provide our existing customers with higher-quality products; Second, we will try to increase the company's production capacity by tapping potential and even expanding production in a relatively short period of time in the future to solve the current dilemma of short supply.
Asian Metal: Thank you again for accepting our interview. Wish you a prosperous business.
