Source: Economic Daily
A few days ago, the State Council issued the "Action Plan for Promoting Large-scale Equipment Renewal and Consumer Goods Trade-in" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), which proposes to focus on the implementation of equipment renewal, consumer goods trade-in, recycling, and standard improvement. The "Plan" supports the equipment of energy conservation and carbon reduction, ultra-low emission, safe production, digital transformation and intelligent upgrading from the policy level, and the machine tool industry has ushered in a significant benefit.
Judging from the current development of the machine tool industry, how much impact will the "plan" bring? How to dredge the "old for new" blocking point of machine tools? How can domestic machine tool enterprises catch this wave of "east wind"? In this regard, the reporter conducted an interview.
Stimulate the vitality of the industry
In the past year, the machine tool industry was affected by factors such as the international environment, geopolitics and weak investment in downstream equipment, and the annual operating income and total profit decreased year-on-year. According to data from the China Machine Tool Industry Association, in 2023, the machine tool industry will complete an operating income of 1,097.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 10.3%, and the total profit of the industry will be 113.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 35.8%.
In this context, the release of the "plan" has undoubtedly injected a "booster" into the machine tool industry.
Mao Yufeng, president of China Machine Tool Industry Association, said that each equipment update action has played an important role in promoting the establishment and development of the mainland machine tool industry and consumer market. In 2009, the equipment renewal action made the mainland the world's largest machine tool producer and consumer, and also laid the foundation of the CNC machine tool industry, cultivating a number of enterprises and industrial clusters with CNC machine tools as the main products. This round of the "Plan" is launched in the context of the central government's proposal to develop new quality productivity and promote high-quality development, and it will surely play a greater role, which can be said to be an upgraded and strengthened version. It is expected that by the end of 2027, at least 100 billion yuan of new demand for machine tool products will be added.
Specifically, the four major actions will affect the operation and development of the machine tool industry. Mao Yufeng analysis, equipment renewal action is the most direct, the most effective, involving the purchase of large quantities of machine tool products; consumer goods trade-in action belongs to the new momentum of the demand side, it is foreseeable that with the increase in sales of consumer goods, the upstream manufacturing links of related consumer goods will also produce new equipment renewal or purchase demand, and then drive the sales of machine tool industry to increase.
He said that the role of recycling and recycling action is more indirect, mainly because a small number of old machine tool products in the first two actions involve transformation and secondary use;
Machine tool is the equipment for the production of industrial equipment and components, and it is the "industrial machine" and "technical cornerstone" to realize the modernization of manufacturing technology and equipment, and to carry new quality productivity and serve Chinese modernization. Tan Xiaodong, director of Beijing Biaoyan Science and Technology Development Center, believes that at present, the level of precision and numerical control of the traditional machine tool industry in the mainland is low, which restricts the high-quality development of the mainland industry to a certain extent. To promote large-scale equipment renewal, the iterative replacement of the machine tool industry is not only the premise and an important starting point, but also an important foundation for improving the quality and production capacity of industrial products.
The capital market is also very optimistic about the effect of the Plan. Zhongtai Securities analysis said that the last round of domestic machine tool consumption peak in 2011 to 2015, according to the 8 to 10 years of the update cycle, 2019 to 2025 a large number of stock machine tools will enter the replacement cycle, judging that the central policy will be introduced in the future, is expected to encourage the domestic manufacturing industry to purchase domestic machine tools. Catalyzed by the superposition policy of the update cycle, domestic "industrial machine tools" enterprises are expected to fully benefit.
Break through the blockage difficulties
The "Plan" deploys a package of policy arrangements in terms of solving the difficulties and blockages of enterprise equipment renewal, so as to provide a guarantee for accelerating the renewal of the industrial field and forming a scale effect.
At present, although the demand for the renewal of old machine tools in the mainland is at an inflection point, the willingness of machine tool companies to participate in the trade-in is not strong enough. Guo Feng, director of the National Machine Tool Product Quality Inspection and Testing Center (Shandong), analyzed that on the one hand, the income from participating in the trade-in is significantly lower than the profit of manufacturing new products; on the other hand, there is a lack of professional service platform, which leads to the residual value assessment of waste machine tools, the procurement of spare parts of old specifications, the cost control of repair, and the sales of old machine tools after transformation / remanufacturing, etc., which leads to greater risks.
In order to solve the above problems, Guo Feng suggested that policy guidance should be strengthened, relevant policy implementation rules should be formulated as soon as possible, and supporting measures such as tax reduction, financial subsidies, and finance should be improved, so that the concept of trade-in and recycling and remanufacturing will form a consensus in the machine tool industry. At the same time, build a service platform that integrates the residual value assessment of waste machine tools, the procurement of old specifications and spare parts, logistics and transportation, test platform and financial subsidy cashing to reduce the risk of replacement.
"Different from the trade-in of consumer goods, large-scale equipment renewal of machine tools and equipment requires a longer industrial cycle, greater social investment, and higher marketization capabilities. In the view of Jiang Shilin, assistant to the chairman of Dalian Koyo Technology Group, as a common and shared production tool for different application fields and different processing objects, the large-scale equipment update of machine tool equipment must be carried out around the industrial needs of its downstream market, and the diversified market demand must have a diversified update route, but how to define the update, how to motivate the update, and how to evaluate the update are all issues that need to be further studied and clarified in the future.
Mao Yufeng said that as an upgraded version, the "plan" must focus on the main line of building new quality productivity for high-quality development to arrange the implementation of relevant policies, solve the problem of bad money driving out good money, make good use of and strengthen the high-end CNC machine tool technical transformation management policies and measures that have achieved good industry feedback, do a good job in upgrading product standards, and improve the bidding system. At the same time, in the course of implementation, it is necessary to always pay attention to the direction, efficiency and ability of investment, and avoid blind investment, false investment and duplicate construction.
Increase the proportion of high-end machine tools
From the perspective of machine tool enterprises, the key to seizing the opportunity is to find the right direction. Equipment renewal is not a simple replacement of similar products, but a higher-end, smarter, and more environmentally friendly demand upgrade, which is an important part of new quality productivity.
"In the future, enterprises with CNC machine tools as the main product will generally benefit, among which high-end CNC machine tools will benefit more. Enterprises that have mastered core technologies, have a complete industrial chain and supply chain ecology, and have a high degree of autonomy will become the main force participating in this round of the "Plan". Mao Yufeng said that the "plan" proposed, "the penetration rate of digital R&D and design tools in industrial enterprises above designated size, and the numerical control rate of key processes exceeded 90% and 75% respectively", and the increase in the scale of CNC machine tools alone has more than doubled.
"It is necessary to adhere to market-oriented development, respect the law of industrial development, solidly study and judge the opportunities of downstream industries, design a package of landing methods and policy toolboxes for large-scale updates of machine tools and equipment, and stabilize and enhance the development confidence of different business entities. Jiang Shilin suggested.
Mao Yufeng said that combined with the implementation of quality requirements, the main product body of the machine tool industry is expected to achieve a major transformation from CNC machine tools to high-end CNC machine tools, and the supply capacity has been greatly improved. Capable enterprises can strive to increase the proportion of high-end CNC machine tool products under the condition of basic possession.
Guo Feng also deeply agrees with this. He said that the implementation of the trade-in policy will further activate the technological innovation of the machine tool industry, accelerate the development process of high-end, intelligent, networked and flexible domestic machine tools, and then improve the accuracy retention, reliability and repairability of domestic machine tools. It should be noted that in this process, it is necessary to speed up the improvement of the machine tool standardization system, formulate and revise a number of standards for intelligence, digitalization, remanufacturing, etc., connect with international standards, fill in the gaps, improve the conversion rate of international standards, and help technological innovation with a high-standard machine tool manufacturing system to lead the high-quality development of the industry.
Only by increasing innovation can enterprises in the machine tool industry achieve high-quality development. Tan Xiaodong said that to promote the iterative upgrading of the machine tool industry in the mainland, the top priority is to combine the development characteristics and development trend of the machine tool industry, strengthen the basic research of the machine tool industry, fully mobilize the elements of "government, industry, academia and research", and jointly carry out joint research around common key technologies such as machine tool precision, intelligence, and low energy consumption, and increase the tilt of scientific research projects in major national research plans and major research and development projects. On this basis, it is necessary to increase policy and financial support and the cultivation of compound talents to provide solid support for large-scale equipment renewal. (Economic Daily reporter Liu Jin Shen Hui)