Demand is sluggish Machine tools need to be upgraded

After entering 2013, China’s imports of machine tools and tools have experienced an overall decline. Imports of machine tools fell by 14.6% year-on-year from January to May, and imports of metalworking tools decreased by 16.8% year-on-year. This is the first double-digit decline in the value of imports of machine tools in 2009 in addition to the global financial crisis. Not only that, in the past two years, the structure of China's imported machine tool products has also undergone significant changes in many aspects.

"The sharp drop in import volume is the inevitable result of the rapid expansion of China's machine tool market into the callback phase after a certain period of time." The relevant personage of the marketing department of China Machine Tool Industry Association believes that the actual situation of the market may be much more severe than the above data.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics from January to May 2013, the output of domestic gold-cutting machine tools decreased by 4.9%, and the average unit price increased by 11.5%. Customs data showed that the number of imported gold-cutting machines decreased by 25.7% and the average unit price increased by 12.1%. In the current situation where the demand for heavy machine tools has been significantly reduced, the average price of machine beds has risen significantly, indicating that the market demand for medium- and low-end machine tools is greatly reduced.

According to the source data of the customs, the import volume of German metal processing machine tools ranked first in the world's machine tool industry is increasing, and the import value has increased by 16.48%. In some advanced machine tool countries such as the United States, the import amount has also increased; while the Korean metal processing has increased. Imports of machine tools decreased by 37.2% compared with the same period in 2012; machine tools in Taiwan also decreased by 15.07%. This shows that the domestic demand for high-end, precision CNC machine tools is increasing.

With the development of domestic aerospace, shipping, military, automotive, steel, machinery, electronics, and chemical industries, the demand for efficient and high-precision automated manufacturing equipment has been driven in various industries, bringing with it high precision, high speed, and high efficiency. The demand for medium and high-end CNC machine tools has increased significantly. This means that in the current situation of reduced demand for the large environment, the product demand structure accelerates the upgrade. “A large number of low-end tooling capabilities in the tool industry rely on national export tax rebates to maintain operations. This waste of excess capacity is bound to be eliminated.” Shen Zhuangxing, Honorary Chairman of the China Machine Tool Industry Association’s tool branch, said.

According to data published by Global Insight, the size of China's manufacturing industry accounted for 19.9% ​​of the world's total in 2011. However, for the tool industry serving the manufacturing industry, the consumption of major raw materials, the proportion of high-speed steel in the world is more than 50%. Cemented carbide accounts for more than 40%. Shen Zhuangxing pointed out that this asymmetrical proportion of consumption shows that the huge waste of resources can no longer be continued. “So, changing the economic development mode of the tool industry means phasing out excess production capacity for high-efficiency and low-efficiency tools, vigorously developing modern and efficient tools that are urgently needed in the manufacturing industry, and maximizing productivity for the society with minimal resource consumption. Needless to say, This process will enable companies in the tool industry to reshuffle the brand according to the principle of survival of the fittest."

Shen Zhuangxing pointed out that in the next 10 years, China's manufacturing industry will accelerate its transformation from big to strong. Therefore, the tool industry needs to meet the new needs of the manufacturing industry, not the increase in the quantity of supplies, but the increase in the level of service. Looking forward to the development of manufacturing technology and equipment in the next 10 years, first of all, environmental protection is a prerequisite. Second, there are five major trends in functionality: high productivity, high performance, high flexibility, adaptive control, and modularity. The requirements for cutting tools are the combination of high performance and stability, long life and efficiency, and reduced cutting energy consumption. In order to meet these new requirements, tool companies must make new breakthroughs in tool system design, materials technology and coating technology.

Shen Zengxing also emphasized that tool companies are entering the development field of modern high-efficiency cutting tools and must complete a major change in their role: from a simple tool supplier, to becoming a supplier of manufacturing process technology solutions. “We have mentioned many times during the development strategy study of the industry that in recent years, China’s tool companies have greatly improved the manufacturing capacity of efficient cutting tools by introducing foreign advanced technology and equipment, and have achieved import substitution in many fields. However, many companies are providing After the tool, there was no comprehensive ability to provide users with extended services, so in the high-end field, it is often one-on-one import substitution, and the expansion of the market size of the whole block is slow.This is the main gap between China's tool companies and foreign advanced level Must be determined to solve it."