Introduction
On the evening of May 15, as crowds slowly disappeared from the Shenzhen International Convention and Exhibition Center, our team packed up exhibition panels, silicon carbide samples, and three days’ worth of conversations before boarding the flight back to Xi’an.
Outside the cabin window were the endless lights of the Pearl River Delta.
Inside the cabin, however, it was unusually quiet.
Everyone was processing what we had just seen at CIBF 2026.
To be honest, we attend CIBF every year.
But this year felt fundamentally different.
We are not a battery manufacturer.
We do not produce cathode materials.
We do not build kilns.
What we manufacture are the silicon carbide roller rods operating silently inside 1200–1600°C kiln systems.
At first glance, that may sound like a very small part of the industry.
But standing at this position — deep inside the furnace, at one of the most easily overlooked yet most critical points of the production line — allows us to observe industry changes from a very different perspective.
And sometimes, perhaps more clearly than most.
LFP No Longer Needs to Prove Itself — But Roller Systems Still Need to Evolve
One of the strongest signals we felt this year was simple:
Phosphate iron lithium (LFP) no longer needs to prove its legitimacy.
That debate is over.
But what changed dramatically compared with previous years was the nature of customer conversations.
Two years ago, kiln manufacturers visiting our booth mostly asked:
- Can your rollers be cheaper?
- How long can they last?
This year, the questions became completely different:
- How low can you control free silicon content?
- After 200 continuous firing cycles at 1200°C, can deformation remain below 1 mm?
- Do you provide atmosphere-compatible protection solutions?
- How do your rollers behave under thermal cycling conditions?
These questions reveal something important:
The lithium battery industry has moved beyond the stage of simply expanding production capacity.
It is now entering a phase defined by:
- process consistency,
- energy efficiency,
- thermal management,
- and precision manufacturing.
And inside this transition, the role of the roller rod is changing.
A roller is no longer just a consumable.
It is becoming part of the process precision itself.
A slight deformation of a roller can create uneven sintering across the entire kiln.
A short roller lifespan can stop a production line repeatedly.
As process windows become narrower, the tolerance for instability becomes smaller.
That realization gave us confidence.
Because the work we do is slowly evolving from:
“replaceable"
to
“critical."
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Solid-State Batteries: Threat or Opportunity?
Another unavoidable topic throughout CIBF 2026 was solid-state batteries.
Naturally, we asked ourselves:
If solid-state batteries eventually replace liquid electrolyte systems, what happens to roller-based kiln production?
Our conclusion is straightforward:
The business will remain — but the technology requirements will change dramatically.
The reason is simple.
Even under optimistic projections, large-scale commercialization of all-solid-state batteries is unlikely before 2030.
Before then:
- liquid systems,
- semi-solid systems,
- and LFP production
will continue dominating large-scale manufacturing.
This means demand for high-performance kiln roller systems will not disappear.
Instead, the requirements placed on them will become even stricter.
From our perspective:
Solid-state is not a threat.
It is potentially the industry’s next technical inflection point.
But only for companies capable of upgrading materials, engineering capability, and system understanding fast enough.
Customers Are Changing — Which Means We Must Change Too
One of the most interesting things this year was not the large corporations.
It was the smaller, highly specialized engineering teams.
Several kiln manufacturers who previously focused only on pricing approached us with completely different requests:
“Can you help us co-develop customized roller solutions?"
“Our new kiln temperature profile no longer matches standard rollers."
This reflects a larger industry shift.
Ten years ago, many customers simply needed:
“A roller that could survive."
Today, they need much more than that.
They need:
- thermal compatibility,
- atmosphere adaptation,
- stress management,
- lifespan prediction,
- support structure optimization,
- and full process stability.
In other words:
The industry is no longer buying only roller rods.
It is buying reliability.
This realization is extremely important for us.
For years, Kegu was primarily viewed as a roller supplier.
But after this exhibition, we believe we must accelerate toward becoming:
a comprehensive engineering solution provider combining:
- materials,
- process understanding,
- kiln engineering,
- and lifecycle optimization.
Because the ceiling of “selling rollers" is clear.
The ceiling of “selling solutions" is only beginning to emerge.
The Most Important Thing We Saw at CIBF 2026
This industry does not lack concepts.
It lacks people willing to turn concepts into stable industrial reality.
Inside every kiln:
every thermal cycle,
every temperature transition,
every hour under 1200–1600°C,
is quietly testing whether a production system is truly reliable.
That reliability is not determined by marketing language.
It is determined by engineering details.
By stress distribution.
By thermal gradients.
By support structure design.
By material stability over thousands of cycles.
These are not glamorous topics.
But they are the topics that ultimately determine:
- battery safety,
- production efficiency,
- and manufacturing cost.
We may not stand under the industry spotlight.
But we stand at one of the hottest and most critical positions inside the furnace.
And perhaps that is exactly why we can feel where this industry is truly heading.
Conclusion
CIBF 2026 reinforced one belief for our team:
The future of advanced manufacturing will not belong only to companies with larger capacity.
It will belong to companies capable of making systems operate:
more stably,
more efficiently,
and for longer periods of time.
For us, that journey starts with something as simple — and as difficult — as building a better roller rod.
A truly good SiC roller must survive not only 1600°C.
It must also survive the cycles of the industry itself.
Ihre Nachricht muss zwischen 20 und 3.000 Zeichen enthalten!
German
