Recent news shows that the German machine tool manufacturer has lost its title of world champion in exports.
According to relevant data, China will become the most important supplier of the global machine tool market segment for the first time in 2025.
Citing preliminary official statistics, the German Machine Tool Manufacturers Association pointed out that China’s share of the global machine tool export business was 21.6%, while Germany only accounted for 16.7%.
As the basis of various industrial productions, the importance of machine tools is self-evident.
Without machine tools, cars, high-speed rails, ships, airplanes, wind turbines, and industrial equipment cannot be manufactured.
In the entire field of machinery and equipment manufacturing, China ranked first in export statistics as early as 2020.
However, in the machine tool industry, Germany has previously maintained its leading position.
In China’s five-year plan over the past 20 years, CNC machine tools have always been the most important development project.
Chinese industry has made significant progress in high-end CNC machine tools, which has reduced dependence on Western imports.
CNC machine tools are the standard configuration of a powerful industrial country. The design and manufacturing level of CNC machine tools in a country represents the level of high-end manufacturing.
There are many CNC machine tool powers in the world, such as Germany, Japan, Switzerland, the United States, as well as Italy, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden and other countries.
Global machine tool sales are approximately US$90 billion, of which CNC machine tools are approximately US$30 billion. Ordinary machine tools are mainly purchased by countries in the Global South.
China’s machine tool exports will rank first in the world in 2025, which is undoubtedly an important achievement.
The manufacturing of top CNC machine tools is extremely difficult, comparable to that of aircraft engines.
Aviation engines, military and civilian jet aircraft, high-speed railway locomotives, high-end ships and warships, electric and fuel vehicles, high-end production equipment, etc. all require top-notch CNC machine tools.
Although the machine tool industry is a smaller industry in the world, with global annual sales approaching 100 billion US dollars, which is two orders of magnitude behind the global multi-trillion dollar automobile industry, CNC machine tools and ordinary machine tools are the basis of the automobile manufacturing industry, such as cutting machine tools, forming machine tools, etc.
China’s machine tool exports will surpass Germany to become the world’s number one in 2025. This is indeed an important milestone for China’s high-end manufacturing industry. It marks that China’s technical strength and international competitiveness in the field of high-end manufacturing have been significantly improved. In the future, it is also expected to occupy a more important position in the global industrial market and make greater contributions to global industrial development.
