Machine Tool Industry Solidifies Recovery

This new survey shows that machine tool manufacturers stabilized their recovery over the previous two years from the precipitous drop of 2009, when total world output fell by fully one-third.This new survey shows that machine tool manufacturers stabilized their recovery over the previous two years from the precipitous drop of 2009, when total world output fell by fully one-third.

During 2012 machine tool  manufacturers saw a leveling off of their output, which dipped 1 percent compared to 2011. Thus they stabilized their recovery over the previous two years from the precipitous drop of 2009, when total world output fell by fully one-third.

According to the most recent annual survey of production and trade in that class of factory equipment, a total of $93.2 billion dollars worth of machine tools was produced globally. That is down a bit from the $94.3 billion in shipments from those same 28 countries in 2011. The total in 2010 was $68.8 billion, the start of  the recovery from 2009 when output had crashed to $56.0 billion.

Among individual producing countries, China showed a slight decline in output but remains by far the largest supplier. China has been the world’s biggest consumer of factory equipment since 2002, heavily relying on imports; in recent years its domestic machine-producing industry has steadily expanded to fill that local demand.

Japan ranks second with no change in the amount produced  from the year before, and it is followed by Germany, which saw an export-driven gain. The output from those top three account for 64 percent of 2012’s total shipments measured in the World Machine Tool Output and Consumption Survey.

Other national industries among top-ten producers had mixed performances. South Korea had virtually no change, Italy and Taiwan increased a few percentage points, the United States gained 7 percent while Switzerland fell by about the same amount. Spain and Austria both had gains in 2012 output.

Machine tools like lathes and presses are the basic building blocks of manufacturing. They are used in durable-goods industries to make items ranging from aircraft to appliances as well as other, more specialized, production machinery. In the World Machine Tool Output & Consumption Survey, data on production, imports, and exports are collected from countries that have substantial equipment-producing industries. Also studied is each country’s apparent consumption, which is calculated as its domestic output, plus its imports and minus its exports.

On the consumption side of the equation, China’s appetite for machine tools continues to make it the largest consumer, with $38.5 billion worth of equipment installed in 2012, a 1 percent decrease from 2011. Moving up to second place by virtue of gains in imports and in local production is the United States, which saw installations increase 19 percent. The next countries on the purchasers’ list, Japan and Germany, had virtually no change in their consumption last year.

The statistics are cited in the 2013 World Machine Tool Output & Consumption Survey, the annual study released recently by industrial publisher Gardner Business Media, Inc. It is presented in a special report on the Internet and will appear in several upcoming Gardner publications.

Editors of the annual survey, which began in 1965, assemble figures from trade associations, government agencies, or major producers in the 28 countries that account for an estimated 95 percent of the total world shipments. The survey, including supplemental tables on ranking by imports, exports, trade balance, and per-capita consumption, plus remarks on individual participating countries, is available in the Research section of the publisher’s website, www.gardnerweb.com.

World MT Output & Consumption Survey, Joe Jablonowski, Editor, P.O. Box 107, Larchmont, New York 10538-0107 USA. Phone 914-834-2300, [email protected].