The domestic machine tool market is gradually warming up

At present, China's machine tool export ranks eighth in the world. The European market accounts for 24% of China's total machine tool exports. The market size is approximately US$600 million. Europe is an important market for Chinese machine tool exports. It is expected that in 2013 China's machine tool consumption will increase by 12% to 38 billion US dollars. For the two predictions of the development of China's machine tool industry, it is no doubt that the machine tool companies in the industry "winter" boost confidence.
In fact, earlier reporters were also informed at the press conference of the China Machine Tool Association that the whole industry of machine tools may have the trend of going first and then lower, that is, the current machine tool market will continue to run low last year and gradually pick up in the later period. Therefore, some experts believe that we should rationally view China's current sluggish machine tool market.

The market warms up

After a decade of rapid growth in China's machine tool industry, starting from the second half of 2011, the industry's downward trend is obvious, and the growth rate continues to slow down. According to incomplete statistics from the Machine Tool Association, by the end of last year, new orders for the machine tool industry had been negative for 19 consecutive months, with a large drop. Several well-known domestic machine tool companies have also suffered losses, and the industry situation is unsatisfactory. The industry generally believes that the golden decade of rapid growth in the machine tool industry has come to an end. The first-quarter financial reports of leading enterprises such as Shenyang Machine Tool, Qinchuan Development, and Kunming Machine Tool continued their losses last year, and the economy continued to operate at a low level. Huazhong Holding even saw shareholders reduce their shareholdings.

However, it is gratifying that in the first quarter of this year, the export value of China's machine tool products was 960 million US dollars, an increase of 8.52% year-on-year, basically continuing the trend of last year. The amount of imports was 2.9 billion U.S. dollars, a sharp decline. The trade deficit has also dropped from 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter of 2012 to 1.96 billion U.S. dollars, and the trade deficit has contracted more significantly.

The reporter learned from the news conference of the China Machine Tool Association that the industry index technology was relatively high at the beginning of 2012; since last September, China’s machine tool market has seen a period of monthly climb, and there will be a relative rest period; There will be a period of time for the product to be digested; generally, the next quarter is the off-season of the machine tool industry. This is the main reason for “low first”, and there may even be a new bottom, but the fundamentals of the macro economy are good. After a period of decline, the economy of the machine tool industry will slowly pick up.

In addition, the favorable policies and the continuous improvement of China's infrastructure construction have also become a powerful signal for the recovery of the machine tool industry. At the end of last year, the Ministry of Finance, the National Development and Reform Commission, the General Administration of Customs, and the State Administration of Taxation jointly issued the “List of Imported Goods for which Domestic Investment Projects are not Exempted from Taxes (Adjusted for 2012)”. Many major technical equipment imported from Chinese domestic investment projects include: A variety of CNC machine tools, airport-specific ground equipment, and solar cell production are no longer eligible for tax exemption. It is understood that the new list of adjusted non-taxable items includes various types of machine tools.

Imports are no longer tax-free, and for foreign-funded enterprises, they will be affected much. It is understood that the adjustment of tax reduction and exemption policies is mainly to support the development of domestic manufacturing industries and encourage foreign-funded enterprises to make more domestic purchases of equipment. Although it has a certain influence on the import of foreign-funded enterprises, it is undoubtedly a boon to domestic equipment manufacturers.

In addition, investment in large-scale infrastructure will boost China's economic growth, especially investment in the expansion of high-speed railways, urban rail transit, airports, and power grids. The process of modernization of industrial infrastructure in China is accelerating, and the demand for efficient and modern manufacturing technologies will increase. This will also inevitably lead to a gradual warming of the machine tool market.

High-end market is still the focus

Although the machine tool market has picked up momentum, according to the first quarter financial report, China imported a total of about 25,000 machine tools, a year-on-year decrease of 16%; the import amount was 2.9 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 14.8%; the import unit price was 117,000 US dollars/a year-on-year. Increased 1.7%. China's machine tool imports are mainly high-end products, and the average import price is 475 times of the average export price.

This also reflects that domestic high-end products have shortcomings in their technological level and industrialization. Although China is currently a major machine tool country, there is still a long way to go before the goal of a powerful machine tool. How to increase the market share in the high-end market has always been the biggest problem in shortening the gap between China and the United States, Germany, Japan and other machine tool powerhouses.

It is undeniable that foreign high-end machine tools can occupy a dominant position in the market for a long time, and their product development, product quality and marketing strategy are inextricably linked. High-tech-led, low-price mid-range machine tool products assembled with high-tech products quickly occupied the Chinese machine tool market, posing serious challenges to Chinese domestic machine tool companies.

Under such circumstances, it is imminent to push the industry to become stronger and stronger. The domestic machine tool industry gradually turned its attention from the original low-end market to the mid-high-end market. Although high-end machine tools still need a lot of imports in a short period of time, the market share of domestic machine tools is constantly increasing.

Some industry sources pointed out that as a machine tool company, we must first clearly understand that the machine tool industry will not be able to develop as fast as it has been in previous years, and must face the medium-speed or even low-speed development of the industry. Second, we should pay attention to R&D investment and related basic theoretical research on machine tools. In addition, capital is still the main bottleneck restricting the development of high-end machine tools. The promotion of some high-end products in the country is hindered, which in turn cannot be known and recognized by the market. This also requires the state to provide certain financial support.