As the "industrial teeth" of equipment manufacturing, brass flat-head screws have achieved a dual improvement in quality and efficiency in the recent wave of high-end manufacturing upgrades, thanks to their excellent electrical conductivity, corrosion resistance and processing convenience. By 2025, the domestic market size of brass fasteners is expected to exceed 48.7 billion yuan, among which brass flat-head screws account for more than 30%, becoming core supporting components in fields such as new energy and electronic information.
The structural explosion on the demand side has become the core engine of industry growth. The performance in the new energy vehicle sector is particularly outstanding. The copper consumption per vehicle is more than twice that of traditional fuel vehicles. Automakers such as Tesla and BYD need to install over 100,000 brass fasteners per vehicle. Flat-head screws, due to their advantages in adhesion, are widely used in battery packs and electronic control systems. The annual growth rate of demand in this field is as high as 22%. Meanwhile, the construction of 5G base stations and the popularization of smart home appliances have created an increment. The annual demand growth rate for brass flat-head screws with a precision of 0.02 millimeters in the electronic information industry exceeds 8%.
The "green transformation" of the raw material market is reshaping the cost structure. Due to the fluctuation of international copper prices, the domestic quotations of brass strip materials have risen by 3.2% compared with the beginning of the year. However, the promotion of the utilization of recycled copper has effectively alleviated the cost pressure. At present, the proportion of recycled brass in raw material supply has reached 35%, an increase of 10 percentage points compared with 2023. A leading enterprise in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, has reduced the raw material cost of brass flat head screws by 12% through a closed-loop recycling system. At the policy level, under the impetus of the "Three-Year Action Plan for High-Quality Development of the Fastener Industry", enterprises utilizing recycled copper can receive special technological transformation subsidies, accelerating the green transformation of the industry.
Technological innovation and quality upgrading build competitive barriers. The popularization of cold heading technology has enabled the dimensional tolerance of products to be controlled within ±0.02 millimeters, with a surface finish of Ra0.8μm and a material utilization rate exceeding 95%. The lead-free process has accelerated. The market share of lead-free brass flat-head screws has risen from 18% in 2023 to 25%, meeting the requirements of the EU RoHS and REACH regulations. The high-strength and high-conductivity brass alloy developed by leading enterprises has a 15% increase in tensile strength and has been widely applied in the aerospace field, driving the profit margin of high-end products to be 20 percentage points higher than that of ordinary products.
The regional industrial clusters present a pattern of "core agglomeration + peripheral growth". The Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta contribute 67% of the national output. Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, known as the "Fastener Capital", alone, Wenzhou and Taizhou contribute 26% of the national output value, forming a complete industrial chain from raw material smelting to finished product testing. The central and western regions have risen rapidly with the help of the manufacturing transfer. In 2024, the output growth rate reached 13.2%, far exceeding the national average. In the Sichuan-Chongqing region, due to the acceleration of infrastructure construction, the purchase volume of brass flat head screws for construction increased by 33.8% year-on-year.
In the future, the industry will move towards "precision, greenness and branding". With the popularization of digital production, leading enterprises have achieved a non-performing rate of less than 0.3‰, and the proportion of online transactions will gradually increase from 8% to 25%. "Specialized, refined, distinctive and innovative" enterprises with lead-free processes and the ability to utilize recycled resources will gain an advantage in industry integration and accelerate the transformation of brass flat head screws from "basic components" to "high-end core components".