Seeking a Breakthrough from Big to Strong in China's Plastic Machinery Industry

China's presses still lack international competitiveness

Li Jian, deputy secretary-general of the China Light Industry Machinery Industry Association, said: "The output of China's plastic machinery ranks first in the world for several consecutive years, and it accounts for more than half of the total number of the world's total. China has become a well-deserved machine-building power, but It is by no means a strong machine country.” When talking about the world status of China's presses, Li Jian pointed out that in the past ten years, China’s plastics machinery industry had sales of RMB 28 billion yuan in the highest vintage, which is less than 14% of the world’s annual average. Only 6% in the export market. More than 50% of the domestic market share is occupied by imported equipment.

Comparing the import and export price index of 2001-2009 presses, it is not difficult to see that the price of imported equipment has been rising all the way. The average price of imports last year reached 160,600 US dollars, while the export equipment price has been low. The average price last year was only 24,400 US dollars. The spread of exports is still widening. "This fully exposed the issue of China's export presses mainly serving the low-end market and low value-added products," said Li Jian.

In addition to the low added value of products, the gap between domestically produced presses and the world level is also manifested in: low equipment efficiency, low product precision, high unit energy consumption, backward measurement and control technology, and short equipment life. These problems have greatly weakened the competitiveness of China's presses in the international market.

Change the concept of development to focus on the needs of the user industry

The research topics in the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period also analyzed the reasons that plagued the development of the plastic machinery industry rather than strong. The research found that the press industry has not yet been free from the development model based on imitation. Most companies adopt the negative mode of “introduction,” “digestion,” and “absorption,” and they provide a full set of innovations, especially based on the needs of the users in front of them. Industrial solutions are weak. Many participating companies also agree with this view.

Li Jian believes that: "China's presses industry provides equipment for almost all industrial sectors. These industries have varying degrees of actual demand and potential demand for plastic machinery, but most of these industries do not know much about plastic machinery. What kind of demand, In particular, potential demand can be solved with plastic machinery, and these industries are not clear.” Therefore, changing the concept of plastics machinery development has become one of the important prerequisites for the press industry to break through the bottleneck of decades of low-level imitations and try to improve the industry. .

In this regard, the practices of foreign companies are worthy of our reference and illustrate the future development trend. For example, after the merger of Battenfeld and Cincinnati, the internal institutions were set up as: Building (Profile), Infrastructure (Pipe) and Packaging. These departments correspond to the front application area, not the machine format.

China is the world's largest market for plastic machinery, and many foreign companies have begun to set up factories in China for local production. It is imperative for the press companies to change their development models. Otherwise, companies will not only lose their high-end overseas markets, but their domestic market share will also be squeezed.