Time：2025-10-16 Read：21
With the overall growth of the Chinese economy, the logistics and warehousing industry is developing rapidly, and the demand for storage shelves is becoming increasingly high. With the widespread use of shelves, specialized and large-scale shelf manufacturing factories have emerged, promoting specialized and standardized production of shelves. Since the 1990s, shelf companies have gradually emerged in China. In the late 1990s, several shelf companies from Europe, such as Schaefer, Dexion, and Stow, began to enter China and played a significant role in promoting the development of the domestic shelf industry. After 2000, domestic shelf companies emerged like mushrooms after rain. In just about ten years of development, there were over 100 shelf companies in the country, not including distribution and trading companies of all sizes.
Situation analysis
Due to the lack of industry standards for shelving enterprises and the low threshold for shelving manufacturing, a large number of shelving production enterprises have emerged in the decade of rapid economic development in China, leading to increasingly fierce market competition. We can divide shelf manufacturers nationwide into three levels: high-end, mid-range, and low-end. High end shelf manufacturers have a certain scale and standardized production, following their own enterprise standards and relevant foreign standards in design, manufacturing, quality, installation, and other aspects, and have established their own brands in the market. These companies have an annual output value exceeding 100 million yuan, and some even reach 300 million to 500 million yuan. For other mid-range shelf manufacturers with an annual output value of over 50 million yuan and average quality standards. Some have transformed from metal product factories to shelf production factories, with an annual output value of less than 50 million yuan. They have low standards in manufacturing processes, material usage, and other aspects, and rely on low prices to gain market share.
From the development in 2008, several large shelving factories have shown a trend of continuous expansion. By expanding their manufacturing bases, they have all attempted to improve their overall competitiveness through economies of scale, some of which began as early as 2006 and 2007. Therefore, more and more companies are competing for market share, and production capacity is rapidly expanding, making market competition exceptionally fierce.
Especially since the first half of 2009, affected by the financial crisis at the end of 2008, the entire demand market has shrunk, and several large shelf companies have fiercely competed for a limited number of projects in order to meet their remaining production capacity. During this period, the overall level of prices has decreased, making the situation for shelf companies even more difficult.
Market Review
In recent years, the development of the shelving industry has been relatively fast. According to statistics, from 2005 to 2007, the shelving market grew by more than 35% annually. In 2007, the industry's output value was about 2.8 billion to 3 billion yuan. However, in 2008, due to the increase in raw material prices, fluctuations in the US dollar exchange rate, and the impact of the international financial tsunami, the industry's growth rate slowed down significantly, with the overall growth rate dropping to about 15%. Several large shelving factories have seen a significant slowdown in growth, and some companies have even experienced negative growth. Since 2009, influenced by the overall environment, the average total output value of Chinese shelf enterprises has significantly decreased, with an average reduction of about 30% to 40% compared to the same period last year.
Before 2000, customers' demand for shelves was mainly limited to simple storage, mostly used by foreign investment enterprises in China. However, a large number of state-owned and private enterprises in China had not yet started using such professional shelves, and the customer base for shelves was relatively narrow. At that time, more than 1 million yuan was considered a large project.
In 2003, with the rapid development of China's manufacturing industry, automotive industry, logistics industry, and professional third-party logistics enterprises, the scale of shelf projects continued to be reflected, and products developed towards large-scale and diversified development, such as storage warehouses for large manufacturing industries, large logistics distribution centers, automated warehousing systems, and so on. Shelves are no longer simple shelves for storing items, but have evolved into a comprehensive warehousing and logistics equipment system that integrates diverse and complex functions. The product has evolved from ordinary storage functions to various shelving systems with warehousing, logistics distribution, and picking functions, such as large pallet shelving, attic shelving, push back shelving, gravity shelving, fluent shelving, mobile shelving steel structure platforms, and so on, as well as a combination of the above types of products to achieve certain warehousing and logistics functions. At this time, projects worth 3 million to 5 million yuan are already common.
Since 2008, the scale of projects has been increasing, with projects exceeding 10 million yuan becoming increasingly common. Shelves have been widely used in production and distribution fields. In fields such as book publishing and distribution, automotive parts transit warehouses, and commercial distribution of fast-moving consumer goods, there have been frequent occurrences of shelving projects exceeding 10 million, even 20 million or 30 million, with unprecedented scale.
Nowadays, the user group of shelves has covered a wide range of industries such as foreign enterprises, private enterprises, and state-owned enterprises. Moreover, with the further development of the economy, after solving the storage problem in warehouses, there is gradually a need to improve warehouse management. Therefore, the demand for integrated warehouse storage solutions will increase, and the demand for automation in warehouse management will also increase. Especially in the field of commercial circulation, there will be a greater demand for warehousing and logistics system solutions.
Automated three-dimensional storage shelves
In recent years, the development of automated three-dimensional warehousing systems has been very rapid. Currently, logistics system integrators are responsible for constructing three-dimensional warehouses. Of course, the automatic three-dimensional warehousing shelves are also provided by several large shelf manufacturers in China, such as Jingxing, Yinfei, Donglian, Liuwei, Shicang, Dinghu, etc.
Among the contractors of automated three-dimensional warehousing systems, high-end foreign brands include Dematic, Dafu, as well as Japanese and Taiwanese brands such as Murata, Okamura, Formosa Plastics, and Mengli. The strongest domestic brands are Kunchuan, Beiqi, and Beizi, in addition to Nitto and Today International. In 2008, many three-dimensional warehouses were built in China. The logistics industry has been listed as the tenth largest industrial revitalization plan, and the country's investment in this area will also increase in the future. Therefore, with the development of the economy, the prospects for the development of automated warehousing shelves will also be very huge.
Market situation of shelf export
In recent years, the export of shelves has been growing rapidly. Domestic enterprises rely on their price advantages in the international market and secure payment through letters of credit. In addition, with the increasing competition in the domestic market, many enterprises are also committed to developing foreign customers. However, starting from the beginning of 2008, with the sharp decline of the US dollar exchange rate, the prices of steel raw materials continued to rise after the 2008 Spring Festival, which was like adding insult to injury and had a great impact on shelf export enterprises. In addition, the impact of the international financial crisis that began in October 2008 on China's real economy has caused the entire export market to fall into a slump since 2009, resulting in a severe shortage of production capacity for shelf companies that originally focused on exports. As a result, they have entered the competition for domestic sales projects.
development trend
With the development of modern warehousing and logistics industry, people have gained a deeper understanding of the value-added services provided by modern logistics. As a basic storage device in the logistics process, shelves will follow the trend of the times, mainly reflected in the development of the following two aspects:
One is that shelving enterprises will not only provide storage shelving products, but also develop towards providing a series of overall warehousing solutions.
The modern warehousing and logistics industry requires the use of modern technology and means to improve logistics efficiency, which requires shelf companies to not only provide shelf products, but also stand from the perspective of users and use professional technology to provide suitable warehousing solutions. This has become a service that provides added value to customers. In the fierce market competition, whoever can create greater customer value is more likely to win.
At the beginning, shelf companies mainly provide shelf products, and later customers will raise questions about how to use shelves. Therefore, it is required that shelf companies provide shelf layout and design solutions. However, after customers use shelves, although the storage problem is solved, they will also face a series of warehouse management issues. This requires shelf companies to provide a complete set of warehouse operation solutions, including shelf labels, barcode scanning, warehouse management software, etc. This will become a development direction for shelf companies to grow and strengthen.
Secondly, shelf companies need to develop towards larger scale, starting with product standardization and new product research and development, in order to reduce production costs through economies of scale.
In the fierce price competition, enterprises must reduce costs, and 70% of the cost of shelves is steel, which can save very little processing space. Only by continuously strengthening product research and development, developing new product models by fully saving materials, and continuously standardizing products, can manufacturing costs be reduced. Moreover, the proportion of fixed expenses in the cost of factories is high, and only by increasing production can more expenses be shared. Therefore, the main direction for shelf production enterprises to improve their comprehensive competitiveness will be through large-scale production and standardized production.
