In recent years, affected by the slowdown of China's economy and investment growth and the upgrading of demand structure, the total scale of China's machine tool consumption market has shown a state of periodic decline. The following introduces the changes in consumption, production and import from the two main product segments of metalworking machine tools and tools.

After reaching the highest level in 2011, the consumption of metal processing machine tools has roughly experienced three steps of decline in 2015. The first step is a relatively high level from 2011 to 2012, at $39.09 billion and $38.28 billion, respectively; the second step is a significant drop from 2013 to 2014, at $31.91 billion and $31.83 billion, respectively; the third step is from 2015 to the present In 2015, the consumption of machine tools was 27.5 billion US dollars, and in the first half of 2016, it was 12.9 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 9.2%. The production trend of metal processing machine tools is roughly similar to the change in consumption, and it has basically formed a three-step decline in synchronization with consumption. In the first half of 2016, the production of metalworking machine tools was 10.4 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 8.8%. Although the import of metal processing machine tools also showed a decline, the third step was not obvious, mainly because the decline in imports gradually slowed down in the later period. In the first half of 2016, the import value of metal processing machine tools was 4 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 6.1%.

After experiencing a slow-moving "turtle-back" growth, the Chinese tool consumer market declined significantly in 2015. In 2015, tool consumption was US$4.5 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 12.1%. In the first half of 2016, tool consumption was US$1.9 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 20.8%. Among them, the running trend of China's tool production is basically synchronized with the consumption, and the main reason for the significant decline is that the demand for low-end cutting tools has shrunk sharply. The import value of tools did not fluctuate much. In the first half of 2016, the import value of tools was 700 million US dollars, down 6.2% year-on-year. This is because the imported tools are mainly for the medium and high-end fields and the demand for the medium and high-end remains relatively stable.

Although it has experienced a significant decline, China's machine tool consumption market is still the world's largest market, occupying an important position. According to global machine tool consumption and trade data, China's machine tool consumption ranked first in the world in 2015, accounting for 34.8% of the total, 3.7 times that of the second-ranked United States; machine tool imports in 2015 ranked first in the world, It accounts for 20.6% of the total, which is 1.9 times that of the second-placed United States. According to relevant data estimates in the first half of this year, it is expected that the decline in China's machine tool consumption will be further narrowed this year, and it will maintain its position as the world's largest market.

Significant structural changes

The remarkable feature of China's machine tool consumption market and industry recently is the obvious structural changes. The structural changes are analyzed from two aspects: segmented fields and imports.

Demand in emerging markets is increasing rapidly, while demand in traditional industries is sluggish. According to the analysis of fixed asset investment data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of 2016, among the 30 sub-sectors of China's manufacturing industry, 66.7% of the 30 sub-sectors of China's manufacturing industry showed an increase in investment growth, and 33.3% showed a decline in investment growth. The data at the end of 2015 are: 86.7% and 13.3%. In terms of growth rate, the sub-sectors with double-digit investment growth rates in the first half of 2016 are: cultural and educational, sports and entertainment products manufacturing (17.1%), food manufacturing (15.9%), and textiles (12.9%). ), electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing (12.3%), and pharmaceutical manufacturing (11.7%). The sub-sectors in which investment fell by more than double digits in the first half of 2016 were: metal products, machinery and equipment repair (-34.9%), tobacco products (-17.7%), and transportation equipment manufacturing (-11%) . In terms of investment, the top three are the non-metallic mineral products industry ($113.1 billion), the chemical product manufacturing industry ($99.9 billion), and the general equipment manufacturing industry ($90.2 billion); the last three are the tobacco product industry ($90.2 billion). $1.3 billion), metal products, machinery and equipment repair ($1.9 billion), and man-made fiber manufacturing ($8.1 billion).

The decline of metal cutting machine tools has slowed down, and metal forming machine tools have not yet bottomed out. Whether it is market consumption or production data, the recent decline in metal cutting machine tools is narrowing. In the first half of 2016, the consumption of metal cutting machine tools was US$8.3 billion, down 3.5% year-on-year. Compared with the end of 2015, the growth rate rebounded by 10.9 percentage points; the consumption of metal forming machine tools was US$4.6 billion, down 17.9% year-on-year, compared with the end of 2015. Compared with the previous year, the growth rate decreased by 5.6 percentage points. In recent years, the structural upgrading of China's machine tool consumption market has accelerated, and the outstanding performance is the rapid shrinking of the demand for non-NC machine tools. Due to the early adjustment in the subdivision of metal cutting machine tools, the adjustment has been carried out relatively fully, and the proportion of CNC products has continued to increase, so it has begun to adapt to the current market demand structure. In contrast, in the subdivision of metal forming machine tools, the adjustment has just begun, and the rapid decline in non-NC demand will inevitably lead to a market downturn.

The drop in demand for low-end tools further reflects the lack of low-end manufacturing. In the first half of 2016, among the imported cutting tool sub-commodities, carbide inserts increased by 2.8% year-on-year, and common turning tools decreased by 10.9% year-on-year; carbide boring tools increased by 12.9% year-on-year, and common boring tools decreased by 13.1% year-on-year; Drill bits decreased by 1.4% year-on-year, and ordinary drill bits decreased by 9% year-on-year. Since 2015, the sales of high-speed steel standard cutting tools represented by high-speed steel drills, turning tools, milling cutters, etc. have dropped sharply by about 30%, which echoes the trend of sharp shrinkage in the sales and use of non-CNC machine tools. Since tool consumption reflects the operating rate of manufacturing, structural changes in tool consumption also indirectly reflect structural changes in equipment usage in manufacturing.

Changes in import sources, the top five import sources of metal processing machine tools in the first half of 2016 are: Japan ($1.19 billion, -9.6% year-on-year, share 30%), Germany ($1.08 billion, 4.8% year-on-year, 27.1% share), Taiwan ($420 million, -17.4% yoy, 10.5% share), South Korea ($290 million, -17.3% yoy, 7.2% share), Switzerland ($220 million, -0.2% yoy, share 5.6%). The top five import sources of cutting tools are: Japan ($190 million, -6.7% year-on-year, share 29.4%), Germany ($120 million, -18.9% year-on-year, share 19.5%), Sweden ($60 million, year-on-year 24.7%) %, share 10.2%), Taiwan ($60 million, -5.4% year-on-year, share 9.9%), South Korea ($50 million, 9.9% year-on-year, share 8.3%).

Changes in import structure, the top three import value of metal cutting machine tools in the first half of 2016 are: machining centers ($1.5 billion, -7.3% year-on-year, share 45.9%), grinding machines ($550 million, year-on-year 9.2%) , share 16.8%), special processing machine tools (420 million US dollars, -10.2% year-on-year, share 12.8%). The top 3 metal forming machine tools are: punching, shearing and folding machine tools ($310 million, -3.9% year-on-year, share 43.7%), forging machine tools ($190 million, year-on-year -24.1%, share 26.8%), press (100 million US dollars, year-on-year -24.1%, share 26.8%) USD, -38.8% YoY, 14.1% share). The top 3 cutting tools are: carbide inserts ($280 million, 2.8% year-on-year, 40% share), drilling/tapping tools ($130 million, -11.7% year-on-year, 18.6% share), milling cutters (0.9 billion USD, -6% YoY, 12.9% share).

NEW CHALLENGES AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES

The downturn of China's economy in recent years is mainly due to the impact of the transformation of new and old kinetic energy and structural upgrading of economic development. Machine tool products belong to the means of production. Obviously, it is impossible to be immune to changes in the industrial needs of domestic users and structural adjustment and upgrading, and will definitely be directly or indirectly affected. In recent years, heavy-duty machine tool manufacturers have experienced severe performance decline due to changes in demand in the energy and steel fields, which is the most typical example. It can be said that these incompatibility with the changes in market demand and how to adapt to the new market demand are new challenges that need to be faced in the Chinese machine tool consumer market today.

There is an old saying in China that "the old won't go, the new won't come". In terms of China's industrialization level and consumption potential, these new challenges themselves breed more new opportunities. First of all, China's industrialization has not yet been completed, many basic links and equipment conditions are still very weak, and there is huge room for improvement. By comparing the division of the development process of industrialization by "Industry 4.0", only a very small number of fields in China's industry are in the stage of "Industry 4.0", and most of them are in the middle and early stage of "Industry 3.0", and there are even some The industry or enterprise is in the "Industry 2.0" stage. It is understandable why in the past ten years, about 1/3 of the consumption structure of China's machine tool market is non-NC machine tool products. This unbalanced development of industrialization means that the stable demand for machine tool consumption in the future may not be as large as in history, but the added value will definitely be higher than before. Secondly, China is the world's largest manufacturing country, has established a complete industrial system, and has many high-quality workers. These advantages will help China's manufacturing industry to serve both domestic and foreign markets in the future. As China is entering the stage of population aging, the quality and quantity of labor force will show a downward trend. In order to make up for the shortage of labor force and rising cost, the requirements for manufacturing equipment in the future will continue to increase in terms of efficiency, automation and intelligence. Some of the low-end and medium-end machine tool stocks formed in the process of rapid investment growth in the past few years will be eliminated or transformed in advance because of this improvement, rather than waiting for their lifespan to expire. We estimate that this part of the demand will form a certain degree of explosive growth with the changes in China's labor force structure. Finally, it is the upgrade of the consumption level of machine tools brought about by the requirements of energy conservation and environmental protection and the development of emerging strategic industries that match the growth of China's economic scale and the improvement of its international status. Such as medical, aerospace, defense industry, energy, transportation and electronic information and other manufacturing fields, high-precision, high-efficiency, high-performance, automated and complex manufacturing requirements solutions must be realized under better unit energy consumption productivity Sustainable development of China's economy and manufacturing.