Supply side: the industry as a whole is large but not strong, independent and controllable trend

(1) Machine tool industry chain and the status quo of China’s machine tools

1, machine tool industry chain: midstream position to undertake the combination of upstream and downstream industrial industries

1KHW002601R0001 The technical level and product quality of the machine tool industry is an important sign to measure the development level of a country’s equipment manufacturing industry. Machine tools are blanks or workpieces of metal or other materials that are processed to make them into the required geometric shape, dimensional accuracy and surface quality of the machine, and the parts of mechanical products are usually processed by machine tools. The main difference between machine tools and other machines is that the machine tool is the machine that manufactures the machine, and it is also the machine that manufactures the machine bed itself, so the machine tool is also called the mother machine or tool machine. The whole machine tool industry chain is clear in the middle and downstream, including upstream basic materials and parts manufacturers, midstream machine tool manufacturers and downstream end users. Upstream basic materials and parts manufacturers mainly provide machine tool manufacturers with structural parts (cast iron, steel, etc.), numerical control system, transmission system 1KHW002601R0001 (guide rail, lead screw, spindle, etc.), tool library, etc., involving enterprises mainly include Fanak, Siemens, Heidhan, Mitsubishi and other companies; Midstream is the machine tool manufacturer, responsible for providing end-users with a variety of machine tools or integrated sets of products to meet their requirements; End users are mainly mold, transportation, aerospace, engineering machinery, military and other fields of the company.

2, the status quo: the world’s largest machine tool production and consumer, the trade deficit is shrinking but the gap between import and export prices is large

China is the world’s largest machine tool producer and consumer. According to Gardner Intelligence data, in 2022, with the continuation of the COVID-19 epidemic and supply chain problems, machine tool production in the world’s top 50 industrialized countries fell by about 10%, from $92.1 billion in 2021 to $82.6 billion in 2022; Machine tool consumption decreased by about 9%, from $87.3 billion in 2021 to $79.5 billion in 2022. Among them, China ranked first in the global total machine tool production and consumption with $27.1 billion and $27.4 billion, respectively.

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Machine tool as both labor-intensive and technology-intensive characteristics of the key industry, high-end technology concentrated in the hands of a few countries, China’s machine tool industry in the international market has gone through the process from relying on imports to achieve independent production, and Germany, Japan and other developed countries trade relations in line with the technology gap model. In the technology gap model, country A is the imitator country and country B is the innovator country. Country B relies on the comparative advantages achieved by technological innovation to export advanced products to country A to obtain monopoly profits. Country A began to produce itself in the 1KHW002601R0001 import process to reduce the trade deficit, but there is a time lag in the diffusion of technology between countries, especially for industrial core products such as machine tools with high technical content and many subdivisions. After A long period of time, country A should close the technological gap, complete the import substitution of products, and reverse the trade deficit. China’s machine tool exports continue to grow, and the trade deficit continues to shrink. In 2022, China’s imports of metal processing machine tools amounted to 6.60 billion US dollars, down 11.5% year-on-year. Among them, the import value of metal cutting machine tools was 5.61 billion US dollars, down 10.1% year-on-year; Imports of metal forming machine tools were 990 million US dollars, down 19.0% year-on-year. The export value of metal processing machine tools was 6.29 billion US dollars, an increase of 18.3%. Among them, the export value of metal cutting machine tools was 4.39 billion US dollars, an increase of 20.4%; The export value of metal forming machine tools was 1.90 billion US dollars, an increase of 13.6%. In terms of trade balance, the trade deficit of metal processing machines narrowed to $310 million, down $1.83 billion from the previous year. China’s machine tool industry trade deficit reached a peak in 2011-2012, and then the overall import volume showed a downward trend, and exports steadily increased, although high-end machine tools are still monopolized by overseas leading enterprises, but under the trend of the rise of domestic private enterprises, import substitution has been achieved in the low-end machine tool market, as well as the industrial transfer from Japan, Germany, the United States and other machine tool powers to China. The high-end market needs to be further developed. In particular, 2011-2019 was the downward stage of domestic machine tool production, at this time state-owned enterprises gradually withdrew from the historical stage, private enterprises entered strongly, eliminated low-end products, and entered the high-end production, although the output declined, but the opposite import and export performance indicates that the pattern optimization has begun, and more competitive domestic machine tools are going to the world.

There is a big gap between the import and export prices of China’s metal processing machine tools, and the average import price is much higher than the average export price. In 2022, the average import price of China’s metal processing machine tools is about 71,900 US dollars/unit, the average export price is about 301.38 US dollars/unit, and the import price is about 240 times the export price, reflecting the relatively low grade of China’s machine tools, and the development of high-end machine tools has a long way to go.