According to SMM, the composite operating rate of the enamelled wire industry was 77.76% in March, up 33.91 percentage points MoM and up 3.38 percentage points YoY.

SMM expects the operating rate of the enamelled wire industry to pull back to 73.81 in April. It is understood that by month-end March, new orders in the enamelled wire industry had already pulled back, and the market showed a marked divergence in demand structure. Among them, demand in sectors such as electric power and two-wheelers remained steady and improving, providing effective support to the industry; however, demand in the home appliance segment weakened more than expected, becoming the core variable dragging down overall prosperity, and enterprises remained cautious about the sustainability of April orders.

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The General Office of the Guangzhou Municipal People’s Government issued the Implementation Plan of Guangzhou for Promoting the High-Quality Development of the Artificial Intelligence Industry. It proposed focusing on advancing the R&D and promotion of intelligent hardware products such as intelligent connected vehicles, intelligent unmanned systems, whole-home intelligent terminals, intelligent wearable devices, industrial intelligent terminals, and brain-computer interfaces; promoting the application of large in-vehicle edge-side models; and supporting the development of AIoT systems featuring collaboration among home appliances, central control systems, and sensors. It also called for advancing the commercialization of embodied AI robots, supporting enterprises in independently developing core parts, and expanding the application of intelligent robots in fields such as industrial manufacturing, household services, and healthcare.

According to SMM, prices of petroleum-based basic chemical raw materials such as styrene and propylene have risen sharply recently, significantly driving up the costs of engineering plastics for home appliances such as PP and ABS. Coupled with shrinking demand from the Middle East, air-conditioner manufacturers' willingness to stockpile and produce has weakened markedly, and softer demand from the home appliance sector has directly dragged down overall demand for enamelled wire.

Recently, Haier Smart Home, leveraging its deep cultivation of artificial intelligence technologies and smart home strategy, was successfully approved to take the lead in the Shandong Province “Strategic Key Standardization Project for Critical AI Multimodal Interaction Technologies in Smart Home Appliances,” becoming the only lead enterprise in the industry in Shandong Province.