The rapid growth in zinc oxide production capacity over the past five years, especially in the indirect method, is mainly due to the rapid development of China's automotive industry, expressways, power grids, home appliances, digital communications, and other industries. For example, indirect method zinc oxide is used in radial tires. In particular, China's automobile sales have been rising steadily in the past three years. According to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China produced a total of 18.4189 million vehicles in 2011, a year-on-year increase of 0.8%, and sold 18.5051 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 2.5%, leading to the rapid simultaneous development of indirect method zinc oxide.
At the same time, international and domestic magnetic materials have also developed rapidly, especially soft magnetic materials, with the world's leading production capacity. China has become the world's manufacturing center for ferrite magnetic materials. In zinc-manganese ferrite, zinc oxide is the main raw material. In the manufacturing of high-end soft magnetic materials, high-grade zinc oxide for voltage-sensitive resistors produced by the indirect method is required. The development of magnetic materials has also driven technological advances in the production of high-quality zinc oxide. The special functions of nano zinc oxide have once again triggered nationwide research and development of nano zinc oxide, but only a handful of companies can actually produce nano zinc oxide products. Research on functional zinc oxide and nano zinc oxide has indeed promoted the development and technological progress of the zinc oxide industry. With the continuous increase in the price of zinc ingots, and with the goal of resource utilization, resource conservation, and cost reduction, the prospect of active zinc oxide is quite good. In recent years, wet-process zinc oxide has made significant progress, and this development trend is expected to continue for a long time.