China's imports of Japanese machine tools drop by 41.6%

In recent years, China's machine tool industry has taken a giant step forward among the world's largest machine tool manufacturers. With the entry of a large number of multinational companies, the Chinese machine tool market has undoubtedly evolved into an invisible battlefield filled with smoke. Here, all companies stand out in the competition with local competitors and other multinational companies. They fight technology, fight service, fight for others, and fight for strategies.

In the first half of 2013, China imported a total of 53,000 machine tools, a year-on-year decrease of 16%; the import amount was US$5.7 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 17.6%; and the import unit price was US$107,000 per unit, a year-on-year decrease of 1.44%. At present, the technological level of the world's machine tools is mainly driven by the production of CNC machine sheets. The development in the next 20 years will also be the case. On the basis of further improving accuracy, efficiency, automation, intelligence, and networking, the company has gradually transitioned to processing units and cutting-edge flexible manufacturing systems.

In advanced technology, we are still in the stage of follow-up. China's CNC machine tools still have a gap in terms of speed and precision. The same specifications of the product, foreign machine tool speed is probably three times the domestic machine tools, accuracy is also close to an order of magnitude higher. The domestic CNC system has obvious gaps from the advanced world level in terms of high-speed, high-precision, five-axis processing and intelligent functions. Therefore, to achieve a full-scale manufacturing industry, high-end numerical control equipment still has to overcome difficulties.

While the Chinese machine tool industry has experienced the development process of learning, imitating, and independent innovation, there is still a considerable gap between accuracy, efficiency, automation, intelligence, environmental protection, and foreign advanced level. The lack of high-speed, high-precision, compound, and intelligent high-level numerically-controlled machine tools has caused the lack of commonality and key technologies to make the status of the “low-end melee and high-end fall” of the domestic machine tool industry not yet fundamentally reversed. At present, the imported products account for 85% of the domestic high-end machine tool market share, while the domestically-used CNC machine tools account for nearly 70% of the simple economical CNC machine tools with low added value.

From the import market and country perspective, the structure of China's machine tool import market is still dominated by Asia and Europe, with imports accounting for nearly 95% of the total. However, the market structure has been dominated by Asia, which accounted for more than 60% of the past, and it has become equal to Europe and Asia.

In 2013, China's imports of machine tools from Japan fell drastically by 41.6%. The growth rate from the German, U.S., and UK markets was significant. To a certain extent, it was also a substitute for Japanese machine tools. However, due to its high price, it cannot Completely compensates for the vacancy in the Japanese market. The sharp decrease in the Japanese market is also the main reason that the total import volume of China's machine tools has fallen by a large margin compared with the same period of last year.

According to relevant data released by the Japan Machine Tool Industry Association on August 12, the amount of machine tool orders in Japan in July (statement value) was 9,293.63 million yen, a decrease of 12.1% year-on-year, and it was less than the same period of previous years for 15 consecutive months. Among them, domestic orders amounted to 39.88 billion yen, an increase of 1.1%, which was also an increase of 14 months. Although the orders for machine tools for automobiles and aircraft were slowly recovering, the machine tool industry thought that “domestic companies are still cautious about investing in equipment”.

Foreign orders, which accounted for nearly 70% of orders, continued to slump, down 17.9% year-on-year to only 60.175 billion yen, a negative growth for 10 consecutive months. Among them, there are many inquiries for automotive machine tools in North America and Southeast Asia. In the same period last year, Chinese orders for many electronic and electrical machine tools remained weak.