Martin Placek
Research expert covering transportation and electronics
Machine tool industry worldwide - statistics & facts
Since the beginning of enlightenment age, the replacement of handwork through machine tools improved the efficiency and productivity throughout the industrial revolutions. Even though the type of machine tools have evolved over time, the market for machine tools reinforced its position globally with an increasing demand from industrial organizations to automate or improve production processes. On the aggregate level, the machine tools market is transformed into becoming one of the most important submarkets of industrial production. For instance, the world machine tool demand more than doubled during the last decade only, reaching roughly 181 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. Despite high usefulness of machine tools for industrial production, only a handful of countries are specialized in manufacturing machine tools. This is mostly because of the high capital and know-how intensity of machine tool manufacturing operations. In 2020, China, Germany, and Japan were the leading countries in the production of machine tools based on production value.
Global trade for machine tools
Over the recent two decades, the annual trade value of machine tools worldwide increased somewhat continuously. In 2020, the global export of machine tools generated almost 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in economic value. Turning to the disaggregated analysis of the machine tools industry, we can observe contrasting trends and tendencies in segments of the global machine tool industry during the same period of interest. For example, the global trade value of machine tools for working mineral materials experienced wide fluctuations with a somewhat increasing trend. On the other hand, the machine tools market segment for working metals expanded in size continuously, even more than doubled in terms of economic value generation. The differential evolution of the global trade for machine tools is mostly dependent on the type of global economic transformation. Since we are experiencing a trend towards more industrialization across countries, there is more demand for advanced industrial production facilities, such as towards high-tech.Regional comparison and global shocks
During the last five years, the global production value of machine tools across regions started to diverge as well. Namely, while the Asian and America regions experienced a stagnant trend, Europe’s total production grew somewhat steadily, reaching over 28.7 billion euros in production value. It appears that China grew throughout the last ten years, while the Asian region remained somewhat stationary in manufacturing of machine tools. However, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic hit the global economy deeply. The health and economic shock of COVID-19 persisted throughout 2020, disrupting economies across countries. Given the immense magnitude of COVID-19, the annual production value of the machine tool industry in Europe is expected to decline by roughly 31 percent in 2020 compared to 2019.Firms in machine tools manufacturing
Firm dynamics make up the aggregate processes in the machine tool industry that arise across countries. Yet, socio-political circumstances are some of the main impact factors on how firms operate to maximize the aggregate production. Therefore, some local firms can thrive to become a global leader. As of 2019, Japanese company Mazak, German company Trumpf, and German and Japanese company DMG Mori were the largest machine tool manufacturers. During the fiscal year of 2019/20, Trumpf Group generated over 3.48 billion euros in global sales. Similarly, DMG Mori also added a substantial economic value in that period. In 2020, DMG Mori AG generated over 1.8 billion euros in total revenue from its worldwide activities.
