It has been over half of 2019. In the context of the complex and volatile economic situation, the automotive and 3C electronic consumer markets in the machine tool industry have continued to decline, and the construction machinery and other markets have generally fallen after rapid growth. In particular, the automotive industry, the most important user area of the machine tool industry, has experienced a sluggish market performance after its first decline in the second half of 2018, and there is still the possibility of aggravation. Then, in the face of the continued decline in the industry's main user market, how did the machine tool industry perform in the first half of the year? What new changes have occurred in the industry? How do companies respond? What are the new highlights? The media department of China Machine Tool Industry Association interviewed several companies with the automobile industry as their main user market, including state-owned, private and foreign-funded companies, through visits, telephone calls, and written submissions. In the face of the emerging operating characteristics of the auto market situation and the proposed business strategies, the company communicates and shares with colleagues in the industry.

Insufficient new orders in the automotive user market and weak growth in the high-end market

Among the companies we interviewed, especially those with a relatively high proportion of the automotive market, in the first half of 2019, overall, there was a significant decline from the same period last year. Compared with previous years, there are still the following outstanding problems:

1. Due to traditional holidays, January and February have always been low points throughout the year. However, the increase in March is very weak compared to previous years because of the product delivery cycle (generally, the order is three months). Directly affect the production and sales of the second quarter.

2. The market performance continued to be sluggish from April to June. Some companies have orders that can only meet the current production capacity, and some companies have already under-operated, and they are unable to provide effective orders for the third quarter. In addition, the production cycle factor not only indicates the third quarter. Even if orders for the third quarter come up, it will be very difficult to achieve delivery in the same year.

3. Some users have delayed receiving orders or even cancelled orders for many times, increasing product inventory backlog and capital occupation.

A not optimistic signal is that in the first half of 2019, the number of new orders from companies has dropped significantly, but because of the continuation effect of the previous market recovery, companies carried over more orders in 2018 in the first half of the year, and some companies even stated that the previous year's orders carried forward this year For the most in ten years. However, because the new orders have not improved for a long time, with the completion of the carry-over orders from the previous year, the downward pressure on enterprises has continued to increase. This sharp downward trend in the user market has caught enterprises by surprise.

According to Zeng Lufang, Marketing Director of Chongqing Machine Tool (Group) Co., Ltd., although the company has won some new orders in other areas such as commercial vehicles, construction machinery, mining machinery, and petroleum machinery, the automotive industry accounts for the company’s product demand. At least 60% or more of the share, especially the passenger car industry's demand for gear processing machine tools dominates, the decline in this market is irreparable by any other industry. It is also a gear machine manufacturer, Yichang Changji said that orders from the domestic automobile industry also declined in the first half of 2019, but because the automobile market only accounts for 20% of its market share, the overall impact is relatively small.

Compared with state-owned and private enterprises, how are foreign-funded enterprises affected? GROB Machine Tool (China) Co., Ltd. is a typical foreign-funded enterprise with the automotive industry as its main user market. In the field of auto parts manufacturing, especially in the field of traditional powertrains, GROB China occupies 75% of the market share, almost All well-known international automobile companies are their customers. The decline in the automotive market has a significant impact on GROB China. According to Ren Hongzhi, General Manager of GROB China, “In the first half of this year, GROB China’s new orders for purchasing equipment from the automotive industry decreased relatively, and they were basically carried forward from last year’s orders. GROB China’s automotive industry in the first half of this year The new orders of the company are mainly for the renovation of stock equipment, and the company’s stock renovation reached 300 million yuan in the first half of the year."

Let's look at the data of Tsugami Precision Machine Tool (China) Co., Ltd., a Japanese machine tool company in China listed in Hong Kong. Tsugami Machine Tool's products in China are mainly precision automatic lathes, precision turret lathes, precision machining centers, precision grinders and precision thread rolling machines, covering IT and electronic products, automobiles, medical equipment and other industries. According to the annual results announcement as of March 31, 2019, the company's revenue during the announcement period was RMB 2.851 billion, a year-on-year increase of 23.19%; gross profit was 713 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50.98%; but by the year Zhongjinshang Machine Tool (China) announced , The controlling shareholder of Japan Tsugami achieved a profit of 1.229 billion yen in the Chinese segment for the three months ended June 30, a year-on-year decline of 51.6%. Among the application fields of China's CNC high-precision machine tools, the automotive industry is the industry with the largest application, and the consumer electronics industry accounts for the second. The continued downturn in the automotive and consumer electronics markets has led to Tsugami Machine Tool China’s leading product CNC high-precision machine tools The decrease in demand was shown in the company's second quarter data report.

The continued downturn in China's auto market has a wide range of influences. Almost all machine tool companies from foreign-funded enterprises to state-owned and private enterprises have been significantly affected. The future trend is worth paying attention to.

Still optimistic about the Chinese market to seize the field of new energy vehicle users

Despite the market downturn, foreign companies are still optimistic about the Chinese market and are still investing in expanding production.

On June 25, 2019, Germany Eswei Machine Tool (SW) Co., Ltd. held an opening ceremony in Yongchuan, Chongqing, and officially announced the establishment of SW Chongqing. Chongqing is one of the provinces and cities with the most dynamic economic development in recent years. There are a large number of auto parts companies and machining companies in this area. Mr. Norbert Wiest, general manager of SW Suzhou and SW Chongqing, said, “Although there is a short-term downturn and decline in the Chinese auto market, from a global perspective, compared with the saturated market capacity in Europe, we believe that the Chinese auto market Still has great potential."

In 2018, Tsugami Machine Tool (China) revealed that it would establish a wholly-owned subsidiary in Bowang District, Ma'anshan City, Anhui Province, China, and establish a new factory in Bowang District, Ma'anshan City. On August 1, 2019, the company announced that Tsugami China has entered into two construction agreements for the construction of the Anhui plant, involving a capital of 178 million yuan. The construction of the Anhui plant is expected to be completed and put into production in 2021. It is reported that although the group knows that the Chinese manufacturing industry has an impact on the current market demand for CNC high-precision machine tools due to changes in the international situation and a number of macroeconomic uncertainties, the group does not have any assessment of the medium and long-term development of the Chinese machine tool manufacturing industry. Changes, that is, the Chinese market maintains high potential demand for CNC high-precision machine tools.

Relative to the lack of power in the traditional auto market, the new energy auto industry is in a race to an enclosure. Previously, the monthly sales of new energy vehicles have repeatedly hit new highs. New production lines have caused a large amount of capital to purchase manufacturing equipment. Foreign-funded enterprises are obviously also optimistic about this cake, using their strong technical capabilities to seize the new energy vehicle market one after another.

Ren Hongzhi, general manager of GROB China, believes that the traditional auto market may not see obvious improvement in a short time in the future, but the power-driven transformation of the auto industry will bring new opportunities to the auto industry. GROB China's Dalian production base started the third-phase expansion project in May 2018, and the expansion was completed in May 2019. The third-phase expansion project has enabled GROB to significantly expand its product range and production flexibility, and gradually expand to the field of electric vehicles. Ren Hongzhi said that GROB has been fully prepared in terms of technology, talents, infrastructure, etc., for the overall environment of China's automotive power-driven market transformation, and is confident to meet the changes in the automotive industry. Mr. Norbert Wiest, general manager of SW Suzhou and SW Chongqing also said, "The rapidly developing new energy vehicle field is a direction SW company attaches great importance to and continues to work hard on."

State-owned and private enterprises are also trying their best to get involved in this field. When introducing the situation of Chongqing machine tool, Zeng Lufang, the marketing director of Chongqing machine tool, said, “In terms of passenger cars, considering cost control and price competition, some new energy vehicle transmission systems and domestic automatic transmission companies have increased production capacity, giving domestic high-end machine tools. There are some opportunities, but the total amount is limited, and the requirements for machine tools are very high. Only when domestic enterprises meet the requirements of users, can they have the opportunity to take a share of the market share of imported machine tools." Combined machine tool company Anhui Licheng Intelligent The equipment joint stock company, whose users are mainly concentrated in the automobile and motorcycle parts industry, the relevant person in charge of the company said that an important strategy of the company in 2019 is to develop and launch new products such as turning units based on the development needs of new energy vehicles and other industries.

Industry companies face more severe challenges

Compared with the traditional automobile market, the base of new energy vehicles accounted for a small proportion, and the automobile statistics in July showed that due to the end of the transition period of new energy subsidies in June, the sales of new energy passenger vehicles fell sharply in July. In July, the production and sales of new energy vehicles were 84,000 and 80,000 respectively, down 6.9% and 4.7% respectively from the same period of the previous year, which directly affected the overall growth rate of new energy vehicles. The future trend of new energy vehicles remains to be seen. It is also worth noting that in July, the production and sales of commercial vehicles were 277,000 and 281,000 respectively, down 6.4% and 14.6% respectively from June; production and sales were down 12.7% and 6.4% respectively over the same period of the previous year.

The industry has basically reached a consensus that the future trend of the auto market may show a downward trend for a long time, and the competition in the future market will become more severe. Compared with some multinational companies with rich technical reserves in the high-end market, some small and medium-sized enterprises face the living space More severe challenges.

The machine tool industry is not only affected by the downturn in the automotive market, but the accelerated transformation and upgrading of the automotive industry in recent years has also impacted industry companies. The impact may be greater. Taking gear machine tools as an example, the current situation of domestic equipment is that domestic equipment is widely used in the processing of manual transmission parts. Domestic automatic transmissions have developed well in recent years, which brings opportunities for transformation and upgrading of this part of domestic equipment. However, domestic automatic transmissions The overall proportion is still low. A large number of automatic gearboxes are produced by joint venture brand companies whose equipment is mainly imported. Many companies supporting them are also required to use imported equipment to process gears. With the increase in the production capacity of domestic automatic transmissions, opportunities are presented to domestic equipment. However, the requirements for machine tools to manufacture automatic transmission gears are much higher than manual transmissions. Therefore, domestic machine tools are required to have higher precision, consistency, and consistency. reliability. This is a critical moment for testing domestic machine tools and an important opportunity to force domestic machine tools to transform and upgrade.

Some problems are not only the gear machine tool industry, but are actually the common pain points of almost all domestic equipment, such as weak industrial foundation capacity, uneven development of the industrial chain, lack of professional and technical personnel, etc., which may be manifested as raw material problems, heat treatment process problems, etc., and some are still Involving many detailed issues such as employee habits and sense of responsibility, these factors will affect the final quality of the machine tool, requiring the joint efforts of industry enterprises and upstream and downstream. If the above problems can be solved step by step, domestic equipment is expected to be upgraded faster. So this is the turning point that determines the destiny of machine tools at present and in the future. Whoever resolves it will survive; if it cannot be resolved, it is only a matter of time before it can be marginalized or eliminated.