As the "mother machine of industry", machine tools have extremely wide downstream application fields and are an important cornerstone for my country to move from a "manufacturing power" to a "manufacturing powerhouse". Therefore, the country has intensively introduced a series of industrial policies to support the development of the company's industry. CNC machine tools have been written into the 14th Five-Year Plan of 12 provinces and cities. The strategic outline of "Made in China 2025" clearly states: "In 2025, the CNC rate of key processes in China will increase from the current 33% to 64%"; the "Action Plan for Promoting Large-Scale Equipment Renewal and Consumer Goods Replacement" proposes that "by 2027, the penetration rate of digital R&D and design tools and the CNC rate of key processes of industrial enterprises above a certain scale will exceed 90% and 75% respectively".
Strong policy support encourages and fosters the further development of enterprises in the field of CNC machine tool manufacturing, strives to promote my country's machine tool industry to reach the level of international peers, and provides a good policy environment for the company's operation and development.
1. Overview of the global machine tool industry
Machine tools are machines that manufacture machines. In general machine manufacturing, the processing workload undertaken by machine tools accounts for 40% to 60% of the total machine manufacturing workload, and they are an important cornerstone of modern industrial development.
According to the motion control method, machine tools can be divided into traditional machine tools and CNC machine tools. Traditional machine tools mainly complete cutting work through manual control, and the processing accuracy and efficiency are low. CNC machine tools are automated machine tools equipped with program control systems, which better solve the problems of complex, precise, batch, and multi-variety parts processing. They are a typical mechatronics product and represent the development direction of modern machine tool control technology.
The machining center is a highly automated multifunctional CNC machine tool with a tool magazine and an automatic tool changer, which greatly improves production efficiency and automation. Since the technical indicators such as machine tool accuracy and stability directly affect the quality and level of the product, the technical level and product quality of the machine tool industry are important indicators of a country's manufacturing development level.
According to application classification, metal processing machine tools can be divided into metal cutting machine tools, metal forming machine tools and woodworking machine tools, among which metal cutting machine tools are the most important type of machine tools, accounting for about 2/3 of the total metal processing machine tools. According to statistics from VDW (German Machine Tool Manufacturers Association), since 2000, the output value of the global metal processing machine tool industry has generally shown an upward trend. In 2019 and 2020, affected by global public health events and tense trade environment, the global output value declined.
In 2020, the output value of the global metal processing machine tool industry was 465.45 billion yuan (converted at the middle exchange rate of the euro against the RMB at the end of the year, the same below), a decline of about 20% from 2019. From 2021 to 2022, countries around the world gradually resumed production and operation, the adverse effects of global public health events on the economy gradually disappeared, and the output value of the global machine tool market resumed growth, reaching 596 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of about 35% from 2020.
The global metal processing machine tool industry is mainly concentrated in China, Germany, Japan, Italy and the United States. Since 2011, China has maintained its position as the world's largest machine tool producer and consumer.
2. Situation of my country's machine tool industry
(1) A new round of upward cycle begins, and the machine tool industry picks up. The development of my country's machine tool industry is closely related to the vigorous development of my country's manufacturing industry. After 2000, China followed the fourth global manufacturing shift and became the new world factory. The manufacturing industry has developed rapidly, and machine tool consumption has also shown explosive growth. From 2000 to 2011, my country's machine tool industry entered a period of rapid development, with the average annual compound growth rate of metal cutting machine tool output reaching 12%, reaching a historical peak of 890,000 units in 2011. From 2012 to 2019, a new round of global manufacturing shift began, with low- and medium-end manufacturing beginning to shift to Southeast Asia, South America and other regions, and high-end manufacturing returning to industrially advanced countries such as Europe and the United States. China's machine tool market began to enter a downward adjustment channel.
In 2019, my country's metal cutting machine tool output was 416,000 units, a decrease of 52.72% compared with 2012; from 2020 to 2021, benefiting from the strong recovery of my country's manufacturing industry, the bottoming demand for equipment renewal in the machine tool industry, and the domestic substitution of machine tools, my country's machine tool industry began to pick up. In 2020, my country's metal cutting machine tool output was 446,000 units, and in 2021, the output of metal cutting machine tools was 602,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 34.98%.
In 2022, affected by the slowdown in macroeconomic growth, the output of metal cutting machine tools was 572,000 units, a slight year-on-year decrease; in 2023, the output of metal cutting machine tools was 613,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%. Since September 2023, it has ended 17 consecutive months of decline and recovered and maintained growth.
According to data from the China Machine Tool Industry Association, my country's metal cutting machine tool production in 2023 will be RMB 113.5 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%. China's machine tool industry has a certain cyclicality. The new round of upward cycle is the development process of China's manufacturing industry transfer, industrial upgrading and demand upgrading. In the future, machine tool upgrades and import substitution will become the main growth drivers of the industry.
(2) The trillion-dollar market is large but not strong, and domestic substitution is imperative
According to VDW data, my country's machine tool consumption accounted for 32.18% of global machine tool consumption in 2022, ranking first in the world. Although the market size of my country's machine tool industry is huge, there are many machine tool companies in the industry, and they are generally small in scale. There is a lack of industry giants and benchmarks. The overall "big but not strong", the level of technological development is still behind that of developed countries, high-end CNC machine tools are still mainly imported, and the self-reliance rate of core components of machine tools is low. Taking metal cutting machine tools as an example, according to data from the China Machine Tool Industry Association and the National Bureau of Statistics, the average unit price of metal cutting machine tools produced in my country in 2019 was about RMB 214,600 per unit. According to data from the General Administration of Customs, my country imported 10,300 CNC machine tools in 2019, with an average unit price of RMB 1.9589 million per unit, which is much higher than the price of domestic metal cutting machine tools. According to data from the China Machine Tool Industry Association, in 2023, my country's imports of machining centers will amount to US$1.99 billion, exports will amount to US$900 million, and the trade deficit will reach US$1.09 billion.
The core technology of machine tools is restricted by developed countries, which not only restricts the development of my country's machine tool industry, but also restricts the upgrading of downstream manufacturing industries. Therefore, import substitution of CNC machine tools in my country is imperative. With the development of "China's Intelligent Manufacturing", CNC machine tools will inevitably grow together with high-end manufacturing industries such as new energy vehicles, intelligent equipment, and aerospace, and achieve mutual success. In the future, domestic high-end CNC machine tools will also occupy a place.
(3) Dramatic changes in the industry structure, rapid rise of private machine tool enterprises
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, 18 state-owned backbone machine tool enterprises were identified, which once represented the highest level of technology and scale in China's machine tool industry and witnessed the process of my country's manufacturing industry from technology introduction to independent research and development. In 2011, Shenyang Machine Tool's output value was US$2.783 billion, ranking first in the world's machine tool enterprise sales output value for the first time; Dalian Machine Tool's output value was US$2.381 billion, ranking fourth.
Since 2012, with the transfer and upgrading of domestic manufacturing industry, the machine tool industry has entered a downward cycle and competition has intensified. The market demand structure has changed significantly, and the market demand for low-end general-purpose machine tools has dropped sharply; the market demand for medium- and high-end, customized and automated complete sets of machine tools has grown rapidly. This change is obviously misaligned with the supply structure of the domestic machine tool industry. Foreign advanced machine tool enterprises have used their product advantages to quickly seize the domestic high-end market share. Due to the challenge of foreign advanced machine tools and the impact of the market economy, the industrial structure has undergone major changes.
In recent years, a number of private enterprises represented by Genesis, Haitian Precision, and Qiaofeng Intelligent have emerged in China. They have seized the opportunity of transformation and upgrading, and are committed to creating domestic mid-to-high-end CNC machine tool products. They have continuously made breakthroughs and mastered the core technologies of mid-to-high-end CNC machine tools, and have been widely recognized by the market. Their comprehensive competitiveness has been greatly improved, and they have gradually become the backbone enterprises in my country's machine tool industry.