NEWS CENTER

Caixin News Agency, April 9 (Reporter Huang Lu) As a key basic support for advanced manufacturing, CNC machine tools have become one of the important areas of my country's localization breakthroughs. The structural upgrade of China's machine tool market will develop in the direction of complete automation, customer customization and general shift upgrades.

The reporter of the Financial Association communicated with a number of industrial chain sources and learned that the key components of domestic manufacturers have been improved in their own production. With the advantage of cost performance of domestic equipment, the downstream orders of Q1 this year are better. Some manufacturers feedback that the production line is close to full load. Even some manufacturers will selectively receive downstream orders with higher gross profit margin according to the existing capacity shortage. It is expected that the industry as a whole will maintain a growth of more than 20% throughout the year.

The wave of equipment upgrades has arrived, and manufacturers have received more orders.

"the demand of the market has always been there, and there were a lot of five-axis machine tools imported last year, and the company made a corresponding layout in the face of the import substitution market. In the process of expanding the company's overall production capacity, the production capacity of all functional components also needs to be increased simultaneously. The electric spindle will basically reach the predetermined production capacity target of 400 sets in 2022, and the production capacity is close to saturation. This year's fixed increase project will expand the production capacity of electric spindles, reaching 1300 sets of electric spindles after delivery." Cod CNC (688305.SH) securities department told the Caixin News Agency reporter.

Regarding this year's market expectations and orders in hand, the above-mentioned people said that from the previous two months, the market demand was good, and the company's latest operating data in March had not been counted. The company's production capacity planning is done by matching orders. This year, the company's overall production capacity is expected to be 350 units, with an annual increase of 100 units in the past two years. The selling price of the company's five-axis machine tools is about 1/2 to 2/3 of the selling price of foreign comparable products, with a complete machine autonomy rate of 85%.

A person from the Securities Department of Neway CNC (688697.SH) said that the company's current order situation is good, and the current manufacturing transformation is moving to the middle and high end. From the perspective of sales in downstream industries, new energy vehicles, aerospace, wind power, semiconductors, etc. The industry has grown more. The company has recently announced plans to build the fourth phase of high-end intelligent CNC equipment and core functional components project. The industry is expected to maintain growth of more than 20% this year.

"The spring of the manufacturing industry has arrived, and the entire domestic manufacturing industry is undergoing major changes. Industrial machine tools are the most basic carrier. The key is how companies grasp this opportunity." The relevant person in charge of Yuhuan CNC (002903.SZ) told the reporter of Caixin News Agency that, for example, the change of titanium alloy in the middle frame of Apple mobile phone will drive a new 3C industry cycle. This year's market opportunity is definitely greater than last year, depending on who can get more orders. It is reported that the company's products have been repeatedly recognized by Apple Industry Chain Company. The company's CNC grinding machine and CNC grinding and polishing products can be widely used in double-sided grinding and polishing of thin sheet parts made of stainless steel, aluminum alloy, titanium alloy and other metal and non-metal hard and brittle materials.

Cheng Qiqi, an industry analyst at the Head Leopard Research Institute, told the Caixin News Agency that domestic brands are currently rising rapidly. Products such as Huazhong CNC's "Huazhong 8" high-performance numerical control system and Kede CNC's GNC62 high-end numerical control system have all broken the Western technology blockade and reached the international advanced level. In the future, the wave of domestic substitution will come. With the optimization and upgrading of China's industrial structure, the market's requirements for the processing accuracy, efficiency, stability, and durability of industrial mother machines will continue to increase.

Capacity close to full load, plus five axis into the mainstream

More downstream orders, many related listed companies feedback that the existing capacity is close to full capacity. The reporter combed and found that a number of head manufacturers have plans to expand production significantly this year, and the five-axis field has become the main theme.

"The market demand for high-end five-axis machining centers is very large, but the company's current production capacity is limited." Qinchuan Machine Tool (000837.SZ) executives previously said so. Genesis (300083.SZ) recently said on the interactive platform that the five-axis CNC machine tool is the seed product actively cultivated by the company and has entered the state of small batch production.

In March this year, Huazhong Numerical Control (300161.SZ) planned to raise an additional 1 billion yuan to add high-end numerical control systems and industrial robots. After the completion of the project, it is expected to achieve an annual production capacity of 1200 sets of five-axis machining center numerical control systems, 500 sets of five-axis turning and milling compound numerical control systems, 300 sets of five-axis laser numerical control systems, 2500 sets of special five-axis numerical control systems, 250000 sets of servo motors and 50000 sets of linear motors.

Cod CNC plans to increase 0.6 billion yuan for intelligent manufacturing projects of five-axis linkage CNC machine tools and construction projects of intelligent manufacturing industrial bases of serialized five-axis horizontal machining centers. Why are enterprises all adding code to the five-axis field? For example, the company provides a customer with 8 five-axis machine tools instead of 30 three-axis machine tools, which can save a lot of personnel and site costs, and the processing efficiency is higher.

It is reported that at present, the production activities of Cod CNC high-end five-axis linkage CNC machine tools are mainly carried out on the Dalian production site. With the rapid growth of product demand and order quantity, product categories and models are also continuously enriched. The company will build a new production base to increase the production capacity of leading products.

According to the above industry insiders, high-end CNC machine tools are still a weak link in China's machine tool industry, and the import dependence is strong. For a long time, there are few domestic enterprises that can independently develop and produce high-end five-axis machining centers. Since 2021, on the one hand, due to the increase in demand for the proportion of high-end manufacturing, the domestic industrial chain is becoming more and more perfect, accelerating the reduction of five-axis machine tools to replace three-axis machine tools. On the other hand, last year, imported machine tools were blocked in order delivery, the flow of technical and after-sales personnel and services, making domestic machine tools more trial opportunities for domestic downstream customers.

The 18th China International Machine Tool Exhibition is about to open in Beijing. The exhibition has also become a barometer of the industry. A reporter from the Financial Association learned that many domestic companies will exhibit new products, and import substitution is expected to accelerate. Cheng Qiqi said that the domestic industrial mother machine industry has experienced the early start, expansion, integration and high-speed development stage, is now ushering in the transformation and upgrading stage. It is predicted that in the next few years, driven by downstream demand, machine tool production capacity will be gradually released; by 2025, the global machine tool industry market size will reach $89 billion, of which China is $36.85 billion.