Mid-range machine tool market is fiercely competitive

Domestic machine tool companies have climbed from low to mid-end, and the high-end foreign companies have increasingly attached importance to this market. There have been news reports that foreign companies have invested in setting up new plants in the country. Their frontiers are undoubtedly mid-range. market. At the same time, the competitiveness of the machine tool companies in Korea and Taiwan in the mid-range market is not to be underestimated.

The ups and downs of the import and export data of machine tool products have a lot to do with this.

The deficit widening reporter learned from the China Machine Tool Industry Association that last year, China's machine tool products accumulated imports of 20.02 billion US dollars, an increase of -0.38%. Metal processing machine tools imported 13.66 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 3.3% year-on-year. Among the metal processing machine tools, imports of gold-cutting machine tools totaled 11.17 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 6.03% year-on-year. Imports of forming machine tools reached 2.49 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of -7.57% year-on-year.

Exports of machine tool products reached US$9.24 billion, an increase of 3.81% year-on-year, of which exports of metal processing machines reached US$2.74 billion, a year-on-year increase of 13.4%. Among the metal processing machine tools, gold-cutting machine tools exported 1.86 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 11.8% year-on-year; and forming machine tools exported 880 million U.S. dollars, a year-on-year increase of 16.9%.

Among them, the gold-cutting machine tool is the absolute main force in the various types of machine tools imported products, an increase of 6.03%; forming machine tools, numerical control devices, cutting tools, parts and components imports were negative year-on-year growth. The machining centers, grinders, special processing machine tools and lathes are among the top four types of metal processing machine tools imported.

From January to December, the number of CNC lathes imported from the mainland of China’s Taiwan region ranked first, and the amount ranked second. Its average unit price is 55% of the average unit price of imported CNC lathes in mainland China. In 2011, China's imports of metal processing machines from Japan increased by 4.1%, ranking first in China's imports of metal processing machine tools, accounting for 41.0% of China's total imports of metal processing machine tools. Japan, Germany, China Taiwan, and South Korea together accounted for 78.5% of China's total imports of metal processing machine tools.

At the same time, the lack of demand in the domestic market has led more companies to shift their business focus to the international market. The recovery of equipment demand in Europe and the United States, its return to the industrial policy of equipment manufacturing, and the easing of employment pressure have become the driving forces for the export of China's machine tools. factor.

In 2012, the order of the top three export orders of China's machine tool products was: cutting tools, gold-cutting machines and abrasives. Among the eight categories of products, the top two fastest-growing exporters were foundry and forming machines, with year-on-year increases of 18.3% and 16.9%, respectively; negative growth was seen in numerical control devices, woodworking machine tools, and abrasives.

From the data, it can be seen that although the export of China's machine tool industry still maintains a certain growth rate, the trend is obviously in a downward channel, and it is difficult to have an optimistic estimate for the export of 2013.

In 2012, China’s export market for metal-working machine tools exports 61.7%, 25.8%, and 10.1% to Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, respectively, which is consistent with the trend of recent shifts in labor-intensive industries to neighboring countries. , also related to the establishment of the ASEAN Free Trade Area. The top 10 exports in the year are sorted as follows: United States, India, Japan, Germany, Russian Federation, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam.

From the nature of the export enterprise of machine tool products. Private enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises are the main force in the export of machine tool products, and the export of state-owned enterprises' machine tool products is declining.

The more difficult it is to catch up, the harder it is to see from the import and export data that in the depressing market environment, both Chinese and foreign companies are affected, and it is precisely under the cover of a nest that they have no eggs. But the difference is that the decline of foreign companies is much lower than that of state-owned enterprises.

What causes this? Wu Bolin, executive vice president of the China Machine Tool Industry Association, said in an interview with reporters: “Despite the rapid development of the machine tool industry over the past decade, domestic companies have made great strides and their product mix continues to escalate, but they are still unable to meet market demand. The speed of change."

According to customs data, the average unit price of machine tools imported last year increased by 8%. From the recent international tendering situation, the amount of bids for foreign high-end machine tools has rapidly risen. This shows that China's high-end products in the performance, quality, reliability, service, brand influence, etc. compared with industrial developed countries still have a big gap.

It is reported that in 2012, China's imports of 2.4 billion euros became the largest single market for the German machinery industry, and China's machinery imports from Germany increased by 14% over the previous year. Martin Karp, chairman of the German Machinery Manufacturers Association, believes that German manufacturers should not overlook the increasingly strong mid-range technology sector, as new industrial countries are increasingly producing their own mid-range technology products. For the Chinese and Indian markets, Karp said that German manufacturers must further focus on mid-range technology.

German machine tools, regardless of machine tool performance or manufacturing process, can be referred to as the “big brothers” of the industry. If they enter the mid-end market, they will have a considerable impact on non-German companies. Chinese domestic machine tools are mainly concentrated in the low-end market. Although Chinese companies gradually move closer to the mid-end market, the mid-end market is still dominated by Taiwan and South Korea. In the long run, the mid-end market is a direction that Chinese companies must explore in the future. Obtaining a place in the mid-end market and stably expanding market share are crucial to the development of the Chinese machine tool manufacturing industry. At the same time, it is also an inevitable step on the way to the high-end market.

At present, China's machine tool industry has a considerable scale, a large number of scientific and technological progress in the machine tool industry has entered the application field, and the manufacturing level of individual products is even close to the international advanced level. A group of medium-to-high-end machine tool tools also serve in key areas such as automobiles, aerospace, shipping, and energy, and also provide complete sets of equipment for foreign high-end users. For example, Jinan No.2 Machine Tool Co., Ltd. won the bid in the United States Ford Company's press line production line and will provide two of the world's most advanced press lines with a total value of up to 1 billion yuan.

However, the large number of imports shows that the structure of China's machine tool products still cannot meet the demand of the domestic market for high-end products. Among imported products, China has imported a lot of machine tool parts, cutting tools, etc., indicating that the phenomenon of bottlenecks in China's functional components has not yet been significantly changed.

Experts in the industry stated that a large part of China's imported machine tools belongs to mid-range machine tool products, and the demand for mid-range machine tool products has increased significantly, reflecting the defects in the technical level and industrialization of domestic medium-to-high end products.

In recent years, TRUMPF, DMG, and other foreign companies have accelerated the mid-range machine tool product offensive in China. In the future, the international giants will quickly occupy the Chinese machine tool market with high-tech-driven low-price mid-range machine tool products assembled with high technology, posing a severe challenge to Chinese domestic machine tool companies. In the future, during the transformation and upgrading of the industry, it will be the best choice for the Chinese machine tool industry to focus on the mid-end machine tool market, and then advance into the high-end market.