Resistor market in Russia. TOP 50 brands

Dear readers, in this article about the analysis of import of resistors, I decided to move away from my traditional model of presentation and try a new format for obtaining final figures. Like it, write comments, I urge you to leave a reaction so that I understand whether to return to the old scheme or take a new one as a basis for future articles.
But first things first. I begin this article traditionally.
It is noted in one report on the capacitor market, that capacitors are the blood of any device. If it is so, then the resistors are no doubt the bones that hold together all the other components on the board.
The delivery of resistors to the customer is an important part of keeping him as your regular customer. The strategy of delivering a complete BOM to the customer is simply impossible without resistors. Although resistors are one of the cheapest groups on the board, underestimating them is one of the lost competitive advantages. It is difficult for a new company to deal with resistors right away, they are cheap, take up a lot of space, they necessarily need a warehouse, this is a huge burden for sales managers and storekeepers in terms of shipment lines. But if you want to earn a place in the sun, you’ll have to sell resistors.
The problem is that resistors, especially the chip, are cheap products. In my opinion, you should not expect a large income from this activity. This is not the product that makes money. Few people fully realize that resistors, especially the chip, are more like marketing, a road that paves the way and helps win loyal customers from competitors or keep regular ones.

The old method

Russian import of resistors

I started this article in the same track. To begin with, we will define the groups by which we will analyze imports to Russia.
What I previously removed from the analysis.

1. JSC “Indesit International”. These are primarily temperature sensors sent directly to the manufacturer.
2. Huge, in comparison with the import of resistors, the supply of JSC “RIGA ELECTRIC MACHINE BUILDING WORKS” for JSC “Krona Group”. These are resistors for electric trains and direct delivery.
3. Traditionally, I have removed the supply of “SIEMENS AG”.
4. I have removed the recipients where it says “ELECTRIC PERMANENT WIRE RESISTOR (COMPONENTS FOR ASSEMBLING HYUNDAI VEHICLES)” and “PERMANENT RESISTORS FOR AUTIMOBILES”.
5. A pair of recipients with the indication ” TENSOMETRIC SENSOR”, ” STRAINS PRESSURE TRANSDUCERS “, “STRAUN SENSOR”.
6. The customs code 8533390000 -Other variable wire resistors, including rheostats and potentiometers. As insignificant, according to general data, only 0.9% of the total amount of imports

As a result, I got this Table 1 of preliminary data.

HS code	Total	Description
8533100000	10204024	Fixed coal resistors, composite or film
8533401000	7748162	Other variables resistors including rheostats and potentiometers up to 20W
8533210000	6427284	Fixed resistors power not exceeding 20 w
8533409000	4579433	Other variables resistors, including rheostats and potentiometers
8533290000	3995374	Other fixed resistors
8533310000	1625663	Variables resistors wire, including rheostats and potentiometers output not exceeding 20 w
Total	34579558

In total, we have $ 34.5 million available for analysis. If you’ve read my articles: Capacitor Market. Part 2; Relay market in Russia; Slice of the Russian market by connector manufacturers you know that the numbers there are many times higher.

The structure of brands looks like this, see Table 2.

Table 2. Structure of brand imports depending on volume.

import	number of brands	Total, million
выше 1 млн	5	12,4
от 100 т до 1 млн	29	6

The remaining millions are shared by a hundred other brands. As always, Russia is simply globalization in its broadest sense – whoever we have.

But interesting is the other, see Table 3.

Table 3. Recipients in 2019

	Total	Type
1/5	1703182	Производитель
2	1511799	Дистрибьютор
3	1490043	Дистрибьютор
4	1141218	Дистрибьютор
5	1054183	Дистрибьютор
6	562271	Производитель
7	522522	Производитель
8	479147	Дистрибьютор
9	456652	Производитель
10	455876	Дистрибьютор
11	419427	Дистрибьютор
12	414459	Производитель
13	383386	Дистрибьютор
14	361133	Производитель
15	345687	Дистрибьютор

The company comes first that provides, first of all, the parent large production holdings, and only then the needs of external customers. The holding provided by this company is one of the largest manufacturing holdings in the electronics industry, but even for such a holding to be in the first place is very unusual. Something’s wrong. I checked the Top 3 brands that are imported by “OSWELL GROUP”, “YAGEO”, “TDK” (“EPCOS”).
It is interesting that the company “OSWELL GROUP” participated in the Expocentre exhibition in 2017, perhaps there it found a Russian company as its client, but there the following are presented as products: “A leadingsupplierofmetercomponentscurrenttransformers, shuntsensors, latchingrelays, powertransformers, LCD/counters, terminals, screws” (A leading supplier of meter components of current transformers, shunt sensors, latching relays, power transformers, LCD displays/counters, terminals, screws).
It is strange, but I did not find any resistors on the company’s website. As a result, I concluded that according to this code, the company imports a product that serves as a resistor or contains it as a key component, but is not a resistor on the board in the usual sense. Plus, without a doubt, the optimization of imports by customs code.
Why I wrote all this in such detail, but all to the fact that the analysis of imports requires a lot of practice and a lot of knowledge about market participants, only in this case you will be able to get the most approximate figures.
As a result, if we take away 800t from the first place, we will get a quite clear figure, 90% of which will be occupied by only two brands – “YAGEO” and “TDK” (“EPCOS”). And the company will move from the first place to the fifth.
What about “OSWELL GROUP”? We will remove this brand from further analysis altogether.

The following Table 4 shows the first 5 brands in each custom code.

Table 4. The first 5 brands in each of the customs code.

HS Code	Manufacturer	Total, usd
8533100000	VISHAY	1943710
	YAGEO CORPORATION	1924215
	WALSIN	981155
	BOURNS	446354
	FENGHUA	398367
8533401000	TDK (EPCOS)	1453828
	BOURNS	940761
	VISHAY	244488
	LITTELFUSE	114835
	SONG HUEI ELECTRIC CO. LTD.	111079
8533210000	TDK (EPCOS)	877440
	YAGEO CORPORATION	729343
	VISHAY	698335
	THINKING ELECTRONIC INDUSTRIAL CO.	153376
	IST	143493
8533409000	TDK (EPCOS)	1290216
	ALBRECHT JUNG GMBH & CO.KG	227685
	BOURNS	195006
	CHINA TOUCHO ELE. TECHNOLOGY CO.LTD	128381
	HAKEL SPOL	125798
8533290000	C.C.OHM ENTERPRISE CO. LTD	158153
	DICONEX DELTA OHM	139771
	TDK (EPCOS)	127451
	VISHAY	118465
	FENGHUA	113495
8533310000	BOURNS	200547
	SUNELECTECH LIMITED	176036
	VISHAY	112487
	MESSIER-BUGATTI	69368
	ELECSOUND ELECTRONICS	67761

In 2008 the Epcos company was acquired by the Japanese corporation “TDK”, with the preservation of the product range, so in this article they are combined. As you can see, “TDK” (“EPCOS”) is the leader in all areas in Russia, except for the code 8533100000. This customs code traditionally accounts for most of the chip resistors and there are completely different leaders. I am pleased to see “YAGEO CORPORATION” among the leaders, as I have been developing this brand in Russia for almost 8 years. In the code 8533310000 the predictable leader is the company “BOURNS”, which is also the world leader in the production of variable resistors.
As in any customs code, products are often imported under the guise of resistors, which, even performing similar functions, are still more often semi-finished products in the form of almost ready-to-assemble modules. For example, a dimmer mechanism that uses variable resistors. But most of my readers are interested in the figures of imports that fall on the component market.
To do this, take the Top 10 distributors and see what brands they import.
The difference between a good manager and a manager is that a good manager is always looking for ways to improve. And then it dawned on me… Stop, I thought, I already have more than 130 brokers on my list of importers, 80 of which were found in the import of resistors. Why should I take 10 if I can take all 80 and get a full slice of the market for resistors among the brands that brokers import. This will automatically cut off brands that are not interesting to my readers in the electrical market, repair, automotive, etc.
Yes, such an article will be smaller in general data, in terms of the number of letters (symbols), but it will be more accurate than previously written articles and therefore even more interesting to readers.

New method

So, first of all, I compiled a full version of the recipient table in 2019 and wrote out all the brokers I could identify from there.
All distributors, brokers, dealers, intermediaries, I will further refer to the term “resellers “. So as not to get confused about the nuances of their business models.
It turned out 79 names of companies-resellers and 2 customs brokers. I also consider customs brokers to be resellers of the widest range of supplies, although for whom exactly they carry – I have only assumptions. In the import table I left only these 81 importers, the rest of the importers I deleted. As a result, I got a figure of 11.2 million. That’s how much these 81 importers imported in total. Let’s make a list of brands that account for these 11.2 million.
Next, just add another column and add the volume of these brands. To do this, we will have to combine all the spellings of all brands and bring them to a single value.
There is a lot of work, but all efforts are justified, see Table 5.

Table 5. Total imports of the Top 50 brands imported by 81 importer-resellers.

Names of lines	Sales through 81 resellers	Varistors. Sales through 81 resellers	Total sales	Share of sales through Russian resellers
TDK (EPCOS)	2920904	1646026	3758440	0,78
VISHAY	1684104	5570	3111985	0,54
YAGEO CORPORATION	1378648	2843	2684707	0,51
BOURNS	1083708	79431	1892327	0,57
WALSIN	372675	0	1007588	0,37
FENGHUA	353532	58791	645812	0,55
THINKING ELECTRONIC	271839	262412	277969	0,98
THUNDER COMPONENTS LTD.	236821	0	314886	0,75
VIKING	227147	0	272972	0,83
CADDOCK ELECTRONICS	213078	0	336706	0,63
KLS ELECTRONIC	192207	65245	245121	0,78
TE CONNECTIVITY	185821	0	301539	0,62
PANASONIC	152586	2133	283175	0,54
AMERICAN TECHNICAL	149002	0	164511	0,91
CHINA TOUCHO ELE.	147800	147800	147800	1,00
EBG – RESISTORS ELEKTRONISCHE BAUELEMENTE	124182	0	223642	0,56
DICONEX DELTA	111740	0	415748	0,27
MURATA	108385	2800	211428	0,51
LITTELFUSE	108010	29355	287619	0,38
KOA SPEER	105169	0	143663	0,73
ANAREN	103643	0	161106	0,64
S.I.R. S.R.L. – SOCIETA  ITALIANA RESISTOR	91228	0	120795	0,76
WEINSCHEL ASSOCIATES	89065	0	114762	0,78
JOYIN	83596	78019	83986	1,00
OHMITE	80185	0	177839	0,45
GUANGDONG HOTTECH	66247	0	97880	0,68
DANOTERM ELECTRIC A/S	59402	0	59402	1,00
FAITHFUL LINK	50504	0	460112	0,11
NXP SEMICONDUCTOR	50275	1174	53659	0,94
SUNTAN	49265	0	87859	0,56
SONG HUEI ELECTRIC	47609	0	153874	0,31
TT ELECTRONICS	45352	158	104405	0,43
JFW INDUSTRIES INC	45261	0	45261	1,00
STACKPOLE ELECTRONICS	45001	0	64151	0,70
BESTBRIGHT ELECTRONICS	44680	27418	52639	0,85
MINI-CIRCUITS	42537	0	58854	0,72
ARCOL	40530	0	81791	0,50
KESTAR ELECTRONIC	34261	34261	34261	1,00
PROSPERITY DIELECTRICS	30778	0	32292	0,95
SUSUMU	27744	0	41490	0,67
ATE-ELECTRONICS	26203	0	31656	0,83
CONTELEC AG	22362	0	38523	0,58
ARAGONESA DE COMPONENTES PASIVOS S.A.	22109	0	35421	0,62
ROYALOHM	21648	0	34707	0,62
DONGGUAN HSIANG-TAI ELECTRONIC	20374	0	46872	0,43
ALLGUY INTERNATIONAL	16929	0	16929	1,00
AVX CORPORATION	15993	12518	27218	0,59
Total	11400139	2455954	19045383	0,60

The problem of the most accurate analysis is that varistors and fuses are also imported according to these codes, although they are functions of circuit protection elements. Finding and selecting them is not a particular problem, except for one, in manual mode it is about several hundred work hours, which for me is a difficult task when writing an article. Therefore, I did it easier, just deleted all the lines where the word fuse was written, and the lines where the word varistor was written, highlighted in a separate column. This is rather an intermediate compromise solution, allowing the reader to make his own conclusion about how to use these figures.
For example, the LITTELFUSE brand is only varistors and self-healing fuses. 100000 is what is left after deleting the lines for fuses. The rest is not possible to identify quickly, there is simply written RESISTORS VARIABLE. In reality, these are varistors or fuses, but what exactly requires viewing each declaration. In general, in Russia, in terms of self-healing fuses, two companies LITTELFUSE and BOURNS dominate, in the rest this factor does not have an impact.
As you can see, I don’t hide the bottlenecks. If you do not agree with the figures for the brand, write, I will definitely correct it, if there are confirmed figures.
81 resellers include all players from the TOP 25 described in the report of the Center for Modern Electronics, minus those specializing exclusively in Russian components. The last column is the share of sales of these brands, through Russian distributors and brokers. Do not be confused by the fact that there are only 81 of them, in total they reflect about 95% of all imported brands. If there is no brand, it means that it is 100% imported directly, bypassing all major players. The table shows that out of 34 mn, only 19 mn falls directly on the component market. In reality, at the expense of small players, 5% more, but this is already quite within the statistical error. All amounts received by you, over 19 mn, will not be directly related to the component market. The only exception is if you just add up the sales of all these resellers, then you get more at the expense of resales.
The percentage of deliveries through resellers will be higher than shown in the last column. Again, these are only Russian recipients registered in Russia. There are also foreign distributors and brokers. Let’s try to calculate them using the example of “TDK” (“EPCOS”).
For the calculation, we will have to list them in a separate Table 6.
Table 6. Examples of senders and their producer recipients.

Name of the sender	Name of the recipient	Total
ARROW	1	291505
	2	34900
	3	3127
	4	2612
EPCOS (ZHUHAI FTZ) CO.LTD	1	197384
AVNET	1	12132
	2	5796
	3	4188
DIGI-KEY CORPORATION	1	26289
TTI INC	1	1753
Total	579685

Only end users are listed in this Table. Although this is far from a complete list, even with this narrow sample, the percentage of purchases of “TDK” (“EPCOS”), through distributors, brokers or directly, increases to 80%.
Conclusion. The last column in the Table is correct, but only reflects the percentage of sales through Russian partners, the total percentage of all sales through distributors, Russian or global, will be even higher. In this article, it is not necessary, as it requires a lot of manual work for each brand.
In general, one still need to view each brand. For example, what does such an unknown brand as “CHINA TOUCHO ELE” do, but here I prefer to leave the solution to the readers. Is it worth comparing the numbers with these 50 brands or deleting some of them?
So there are 3 exact figures: 10.8 million dollars of imports of the TOP 50 brands accounted for by brokers and distributors, 11.2 million – the sum of all brands supplied through brokers and 19 million dollars – the total amount of imports for these brands.
Now we will decompose this amount in Table 7 by customs codes.

Table 7. Import by customs codes, how much is total and how much is accounted for only by dedicated resellers.

	Amount, mn usd
Line Names	Resellers	Total	%
8533100000	4,900	10,204	0,480203
8533401000	2,400	7,748	0,309751
8533210000	2,290	6,400	0,357778
8533409000	1,034	4,579	0,225877
8533290000	0,674	3,995	0,168706
8533310000	0,162	1,626	0,099459
Total	11,484	34,500	0,332881

Don’t be confused by the difference in the results, 10.8 million are only the first 50 brands, 11.2 million are all brands that imported 81 resellers.
What can be said in the summary of the article. As you can see, the import volume is small in USD, but very important for supplying customers. Up to half of the lines in the customer specification in 90% of all specifications are occupied by resistors. You can’t make much money on this group. In the amount of money, this is about 3% of the total amount of the customer’s specification, but the cost of selling here is higher than for example selling microcontrollers. Whether to deal with them is decided by each company individually, sometimes it is easier to agree on special conditions with partners who already have a warehouse in Russia.

Production of chip resistors in Russia

In Russia, there are no specialized statistics that allow you to get an accurate market profile. Almost all reports will be generalized. Almost no Russian company, for a year of existence of the site, did not answer me about their real data. The most accurate data is provided only by the annual reports of enterprises, if they are not part of state holdings. As soon as they enter, publications stop. A paradoxical situation arises. The more the state strengthens the electronic industry, the more closed it becomes. The more closed it becomes, the less it strives for the civilian market.

But at first it didn’t stop me until I read two news stories.

1. A new automated line has been installed at JSC “Resurs”, which allows for the production of chip-resistors of the OTC quality category in the amount of 50 million units per month. The state corporation “Rostec” took part in the project.
2. The radio components plant “Oxide” in Novosibirsk, which belongs to the State Corporation “Rostec”, has put into operation a production line where resistors are produced in SMD-version. According to the general director of the plant Lev Nosenko, about 170 million units will be produced there annually. He stressed that the new equipment will be used for the production of SMD-resistors for surface mounting type P1-12. Such resistors are later installed on various equipment, including smartphones, cars and household appliances.

If you add up the volume of the two manufacturers, you will get about 800 million pieces per year. The average price of a chip resistor in the case of 0603 and 0805, in civilian prices, is 0.45 and 0.8 USD per 1000 piece on FOB. It turns out that the volume of output of the two most modern lines in Russia is about 360-640 t USD in import prices, which is a maximum of 13% of the import of 81 brokers and 6% of the entire market, according to the code 8533100000.
But these maximums are in the case of 100% line loading. Experience shows that 50-70% is already a great achievement. I don’t think the current line load currently exceeds 20%. For example, the supply by a civilian enterprise at the Resurs plant does not exceed 5%. But in addition to these two enterprises, others are also working for the state order, for example, the third major player JSC “NPO “ERKON”, also has lines for the production of chip resistors. The final market of state orders, with their small-scale production, is clearly insufficient to load all the lines in Russia for the production of chip resistors.
Since these two new lines are primarily installed for military acceptance, the amount for 1 resistor will be 5-10 times higher than in the civilian market, but even if these lines want to produce civilian products, they simply will not be able to. In unit terms, the performance of the lines is clearly insufficient. “Ledel” alone consumes about 15-20 mn of chip resistors per year.
I repeat, you need to understand that these small volumes have already been divided among several enterprises, which are already clearly cramped and lack market share for natural development, and there will be no natural development, since they will not have enough production capacity. These enterprises are not even given such a task.
In general, in this decade, the 81 resellers described in this article should not be afraid of ultra-modern lines for the production of chip resistors. Yes, undoubtedly, under the influence of various protective measures, they will completely oust foreign brands from the state order, but the matter will not progress further due to the reasons described above, as well as the reasons set out in my article “Promotion of Russian enterprises of electronic components in the civilian market”.