---

Producers	Exporters	Importers
Trade Balance	Consumers	Per Capita
Analysis	Country Reports	Methodology
Reports/Presentations

Over the course of 2010, machine tool manufacturers in countries across the globe increased their output, in aggregate by 21% over 2009, and early indications are that growth will continue. And while some national industries emerged from recession sooner than others, China firmly established itself as both the world’s largest consumer and its biggest producer.

According to this most recent survey of production and trade in that class of factory equipment, a total of $66.3-billion dollars worth of machine tools was produced globally. That compares with $54.7-billion in 2009 shipments.

Shipments of machine tools in the Peoples Republic of China gained 31% to nearly $20-billion in 2010, cementing the country’s hold on it spot as number-one producer. China—whose overall economy in 2010 surpassed that of Japan to become the world’s second-largest after the U.S.—has been the biggest consumer of factory equipment since 2002. Expansion by locally owned machinery producers as well as of Chinese plants owned by major players in Taiwan, Japan, Europe and America has steadily stepped up to fill that demand.

Elsewhere, national industries that had been clobbered by the recession started to stage a revival. Japanese builders, whose shipments of machine tools fell by more than half in 2009, made a 59% yen-based increase in 2010 and regained number-two-producer position. Other Asian countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and India saw sharp 2010 rebounds after experiencing fall-offs in shipments the previous year.

Metalworking technology providers in Europe and the United States generally showed 2010 shipments level with or slightly above those of 2009. In many cases orders for equipment had returned, but builders there had to cope with long-lead time bookings or faced bottlenecks in recession-pared supply chains or workforces.

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, import, and export are collected from countries that have substantial equipment-producing industries. The survey also calculates each country’s apparent consumption, which is calculated as its domestic output, plus its imports and minus its exports. Trade balance and consumption per capita also are studied.

As a bloc, five Asian nations (China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and India) account for $40.6-billion, or more than 60% of the survey total production. They consumed $39.2-billion in machine tools.

The statistics are cited here in the 2011 World Machine Tool Output & Consumption Survey, the annual study by industrial publisher Gardner Publications, Inc. It is presented in a special edition of Metalworking Insiders’ Report, the monthly newsletter for machine-tool executives, and will appear in several other Gardner publications including Modern Machine Shop.

Countries included in this annual WMTO&CS generally are those that have established production capacity and therefore effective internal data collection. The authors estimate that the 28 countries that are part of the study represent more than 95% of world output, with the larger producers consuming the bulk of the annual shipments.