Kunshan in June, the hot sun directly after the rain of the earth, the billowing heat wave. In the constant temperature and humidity workshop of Huachen Precision Equipment (Kunshan) Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as “Huachen Equipment”), engineers are commissioning the company’s latest generation of “subμ grinding center”. The relevant person in charge of the company introduced that the product is mainly used in aerospace, engineering machinery, precision motor and other national key industries, which can realize the precision grinding of complex features parts, and the accuracy indicators are comparable to similar foreign products.

Leaving Huachen equipment, the reporter drove to Kunshan Taigong Precision Machinery Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as “Taigong Machinery”), 10 kilometers away, along the way several trucks carrying containers passed by, it is not known that soon there will be a number of containers carrying two gantry processing centers of Taigong machinery manufacturing to Serbia. The person in charge of the company told reporters that the equipment will produce battery integrated chassis for customers of Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and other brands of new energy vehicles. The export of the two equipment is also an important exploration of the company to expand overseas markets.

Recently, the reporter followed the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology SME development promotion center to visit a number of industrial mother-machine enterprises in Kunshan found that many important functional components of China’s industrial mother-machine have broken the import monopoly, and a number of technical indicators have reached the international high-end level; However, the situation that China’s industrial mother-machine industry is large but not strong still exists, and multi-efforts are still needed to accelerate the domestic substitution of industrial mother-machine.

Core functional components of industrial mother-machine

Break the import monopoly

In 2022, Kunshan became the country’s first county-level city with a GDP exceeding 500 billion yuan. Thanks to the development concept of “establishing a city by industry” upheld by Kunshan, the output value of the planned industry in Kunshan will reach 1,081,098 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of 4.1% year-on-year. As a leading industry at 100 billion level, equipment manufacturing continues to make efforts, and its output value will be 289.641 billion yuan in 2022.

As the cornerstone and cradle of the industrial system, its quality and performance determine the manufacturing strength and development level of a country, and it is the comprehensive embodiment of the national basic manufacturing capacity. For a long time, Kunshan attaches great importance to the development of the industrial motherboard industry, and many small and medium-sized enterprises in the field of industrial motherboard have taken a solid step in breaking the import monopoly and impacting the high-end.

Huachen Equipment said that through long-term technology accumulation, the company has repeatedly broken foreign technology monopoly in high-precision CNC roll grinding machines and other fields to overcome a number of “jam neck” sophisticated technologies. The company’s main products serve the industries of iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, textile and paper, mechanical processing, etc., and has established long-term cooperative relations with more than 200 enterprises at home and abroad.

Liu Bing, executive director of Taiwan Machinery, also told reporters that the company’s production of a number of industrial mother machines has reached the international high-end level, but also recognized by overseas customers, the recent two new energy vehicle battery integration chassis processing machine tools will be exported to Serbia, which is also the company’s important exploration of how to make good use of domestic and international market resources.

“Turntable, tool tower, tool store three important functional parts of industrial mother-machine, a few years ago all rely on imports, after R & D personnel technical research, we broke the import monopoly of related technologies.” Zhao Xiangyu, general manager of Jiangsu Gutian Automation Co., Ltd. told reporters.

Guohai Securities analysis pointed out that in the process of upgrading the demand structure of the local industrial mother-machine market, private enterprises quietly rose. Some private machine tool enterprises seize the opportunity of industry transformation, positioning high-end CNC machine tool products, around the needs of downstream industries such as automotive, consumer electronics, high-end equipment for product development, machine tool quality gradually improved, compared with the same imported machine tools with price advantages, gradually emerging in the market competition, become the backbone of the local machine tool industry.

Industrial mother-machine industry

Big but not too strong to break

In the past ten years, China’s industrial mother machines have made major breakthroughs from scratch, from weak to strong. Wang Weiming, director of the first Department of equipment industry of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, previously said that for more than a decade, the independent development capability and industrial technology level of China’s industrial mother-machine have been significantly improved, breaking through a number of key core technologies such as full digital high-speed and high-precision motion control and multi-axis linkage. In terms of industrial supporting systems, domestic high-end CNC systems have grown from scratch, and their market share in domestic machine tools has increased from less than 1% to 31.9%.

However, we should also see that China’s industrial machine industry is large but not strong, the situation still exists, the overall low-end of domestic machine tools, high-end products are mainly imported from Germany and Japan and other machine tool developed countries. Guohai Securities research report pointed out that 80% of the high-end machine tool market was occupied by Germany and Japan, and domestic brands replaced the high-end market space. Zhao Xiangyu also said that China, as a global industrial machine production and consumption country, the localization rate of high-end products is low, and 90% of the profits are earned by foreign enterprises.

China’s industrial machine industry as a whole is large but not strong is also reflected in the huge difference in the average price of imports and domestic machine tools, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, the General Administration of Customs and China Machine Tool Industry Association data calculation, 2022 China’s average price of imported machine tools is 520,000 yuan, while the average price of domestic metal processing machine tools is less than 250,000 yuan, the average price of domestic machine tools is far lower than the price of imported machine tools.

The lack of high-end in the domestic industrial mother-machine field or has an adverse impact on the innovation and development of related enterprises. “Turntable, knife tower and other industrial mother-machine functional parts have long broken the overseas monopoly, but can not find matching industrial mother-machine manufacturers in China.” Zhao Xiangyu pointed out that at present, there is no lack of industrial mother-machine manufacturers in China, but most companies produce low-end products, and the demand for high-precision functional parts is weak; The high-end product orders are too concentrated in the hands of a few enterprises, and the market competition is not sufficient, which is not conducive to the breakthrough of relevant technologies.

At the same time, the lack of supply of top technical talents in the core technology field of industrial machines also restricts the development of the industry. Liu Bing said that industrial machine is a highly professional industry, involving material science, mechanical design and manufacturing, electrical control and automation, metal cutting technology research and other professional fields, enterprise on-the-job talent training is difficult, long cycle; In terms of vocational education, few universities carry out systematic in-depth orientation personnel training in the field of industrial mother-machine. “Talents with relevant technology and experience are often more willing to enter aerospace, military and other fields.” Zhao Xiangyu said.

In addition, the low acceptance of domestic equipment by some domestic enterprises is also one of the reasons that hinder the development of domestic equipment. The person in charge of the enterprise admitted to the reporter that when choosing the core functional parts of the industrial machine, for the consideration of “risk avoidance”, downstream enterprises are more inclined to choose imported products is still a more common phenomenon.