Just in the past week (June 19-25), the industrial mother machine with a 3.51% increase in heat, becoming one of the hottest topics in the secondary market after satellite Internet and robots.

Under the promotion of major national science and technology projects such as the “04 Special Project”, domestic high-end machine tools, CNC systems, and core components began to achieve import substitution in high-end manufacturing fields such as military industry and aerospace, achieving a breakthrough from scratch. More enterprises “dare to use” domestic machine tools, and accelerate domestic high-end machine tools from “can use” to “easy to use”.

According to data from the SME Development Promotion Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the technical level of China’s five-axis machining center in 2022 is rapidly shortening compared with Europe, the United States and Japan.

The turning point of industrial mother-machine is coming

In 2021, the industrial mother machine was named at the SASAC Party Committee meeting of The State Council to strengthen the key core technology research, and successfully entered the A-share top stream, becoming one of the hottest concepts in the past two years.

Industrial machine, in a broad sense refers to the manufacture of machines and machinery of the machine, in a narrow sense refers to metal processing machine tools. As a strategic industry, industrial machines are at the front end of the entire manufacturing industry chain and carry the foundation of the entire manufacturing industry. As one of the most important tools for industrial production, the downstream application terminals of industrial mother-machines are mainly machinery and equipment, new energy, aerospace and other industries.

At present, China’s industrial machine industry has formed a complete industrial system, the whole in the world’s second echelon. In the field of CNC systems, high-precision sensors, spindles and other core components, China’s competitiveness is still weak.

In the CNC machine tool market, there is a “predicament” of “low-end domestic brand homogenization competition, mid-end machine and parts rely on imports, and high-end market is subject to overseas embargo and technical control gap.” According to the data of China Machine Tool Industry Association, at present, China’s machine tool supporting a large number of high-grade functional components rely on imports, domestic high-grade system self-sufficiency rate of less than 10%, about 90% dependent on imports, which imports from Japan, accounting for about 1/3, domestic high-grade CNC system added up to less than 30%.

Recently, a number of policies and conferences have focused on the high-quality development of the industrial machine industry, bringing the “spring breeze” to the development of the industry.

In the “Third Industrial machine high-quality Development Forum” that just ended last month, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that it will adhere to the “demand orientation, scene pull, pilot test verification, beads into a chain”, and strive to improve the ability of independent innovation, promote industrial quality upgrading, strengthen market application and promotion, cultivate a complete industrial ecology, and promote the high-quality development of the industrial machine industry.

The expanded meeting held by the Party Committee of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council recently stressed that it is necessary to guide and promote the central enterprises to increase the layout of strategic emerging industries such as new generation information technology, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and industrial mother-machines, and promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries through digitalization, intelligence, and green.

Guangdong Province issued the Opinions on Building a strong Province of high-quality Manufacturing, proposing to cultivate and expand industrial clusters of one trillion yuan. Focus on the field of equipment manufacturing and terminal products, and vigorously develop high-end industrial mother-machine industries.

Some market participants analyze that in the context of autonomous controllable + update cycle, the machine tool industry will usher in an upward cycle. From the perspective of the large cycle, the replacement cycle of the industrial machine industry is about 7-10 years, and the last round of highs is 2011-2013, and it is expected that the turning point of the industrial machine will be reached.

The accelerated transformation of China’s manufacturing industry and the rapid rise of emerging industries such as precision molds, aerospace, rail transit, and biomedicine are expected to become a new growth point for the CNC machine tool industry. Some institutions are expected that by 2026, China’s CNC machine tool market will exceed 500 billion yuan; 2024-2028, the size of the domestic industrial mother-machine market will exceed trillion yuan.