According to the latest data, in July, the 24 major excavator manufacturers included in the statistics sold a total of more than 11100 excavators of various types, up 45.28% year-on-year, and the sales volume reached a record high in the same month for the third consecutive month.
In the first seven months, the accumulative sales volume of excavators exceeded 131,000 units, a sharp increase of 58.65% compared with the same period last year, and the possibility of record sales volume for the whole year was further improved from last month.
In July, the 11 major bulldozer manufacturers included in the statistics sold about 480 bulldozers of various types, up 38.8% year on year. From January to July, the total sales volume of bulldozers reached 4950 units, up 36.89% year on year.
In the first seven months of 2018, the sales data of all types of construction machinery show a rising trend, and it is expected that this year's high-speed growth of the industry has been established. According to the analysis of some research institutions, the construction machinery industry is expected to maintain a steady growth in the next three years based on the six positive factors of equipment inventory update, new equipment demand and the enterprise's own development.
Stock equipment upgrade
Research data shows that 80% of future demand of construction machinery industry comes from equipment updating and upgrading, which is relatively robust and has little downside risk.
Generally speaking, the life cycle of construction machinery products is 8~10 years. The sales peak of the last round was concentrated around 2011, and the peak stage of elimination and update iteration was from 2017 to 2019. According to statistics, at present, the market volume of construction machinery industry is more than 7 million, and about 2.4 million old equipment is facing elimination, which provides market space for new machine sales, further driving the demand of the industry.
At the same time, both the national and local requirements for environmental protection are increasingly strict, most of the existing equipment in the market belongs to the national second, national third emissions, even less than the age of the machine may be forced to ban because of environmental concerns. Therefore, the environmental protection policy and the machine age two aspects have further expanded the construction machinery renewal demand.
Policy-driven infrastructure investment is expected to pick up
In the first half of 2018, China's fixed asset investment grew by 6% and infrastructure investment grew by 7.3% year on year, significantly slower than expected, which also affected the overall development of China's economy to some extent. To this end, a meeting of the state council and the political bureau in late July set the tone of "ensuring infrastructure and promoting investment". A more proactive fiscal policy and a return to investment in PPP projects, coupled with a loose monetary policy, have ensured the smooth progress of infrastructure projects in all aspects and eased investors' concerns about the slowdown of the industry.
According to years of development experience, the sales volume of construction machinery in China is positively correlated with the fixed asset investment. It is expected that with the implementation of various infrastructure projects in September, the sales volume of construction machinery industry will increase substantially.
Engineering machinery continues to infiltrate mechanical substitutes
In recent years, with the increasingly serious aging of China's population, labor shortage, labor costs rose significantly, the trend of mechanical replacement is obvious. Previously, the expansion of roads, construction of farmland and construction of water conservancy facilities in China's rural market were basically dependent on labor force, but now there is a lack of young labor force in rural areas, and most young people are rarely willing to do this job, so the labor cost rises sharply, giving rise to the trend of replacing labor with machinery. In the past, China's excavator per capita possession is low, the future construction machinery penetration rate is expected to continue to increase. Moreover, not only is the construction machinery domain, each industrial domain mechanical substitution tendency is very obvious.
The recovery in mining investment has provided new growth drivers
After the financial crisis in 2008, the stall of global economic growth led to the downward trend of demand for mineral resources, and the global mining industry as a whole showed a trend of stagnant growth, declining investment and capacity clearance. Since 2017, the global mining industry has shown a warming trend.
Take the data of the first half of 2018 in China as an example. From January to June, the added value of industries above designated size in China increased by 6.7% year on year. Among them, the added value of mining industry increased by 1.6% year on year, expanding by 0.3 percentage points. Investment in the mining sector turned from down to up, up 0.2 percent year-on-year.
The recovery of the mining industry is of great significance in boosting the demand for mining equipment. Previously, mining equipment has been carter, komatsu and other foreign enterprises monopoly. In recent years, with the development of domestic construction machinery, the competitiveness of mining equipment produced by XCMG and first-class construction machinery enterprises has been continuously improved, which has opened the door of the mining machinery market and facilitated the entry of domestic equipment.
Comprehensive strength to enhance the steady growth of exports
The overall level of China's construction machinery industry, not only to increase the domestic market share, in the opening up of overseas markets also has a significant effect. In terms of overseas market development, "One Belt And One Road" countries have become the most important target market for Chinese construction machinery enterprises. Chinese construction machinery and equipment frequently appear in the construction of china-laos railway, china-thailand railway, hungary-serbia railway, jakarta-bandung high-speed railway and other international corridors. Moreover, the emerging markets represented by India have a low urbanization rate and poor infrastructure construction, so they have a large demand space for construction machinery, which is more conducive to China's export of construction machinery.
Enterprises should be more cautious in managing risks
On the feeling of as long as five years of the industry winter period, even if the industry situation is hot again, China's construction machinery enterprises in production, sales and industry forecast still maintain a cautious mentality.
The good development trend of the construction machinery industry does not make enterprises forget themselves and blindly improve the production capacity. On the contrary, most enterprises in the industry begin to focus on strengthening cash management and purifying high-quality customers. The way of production and sales with steady flow also helps to reduce the risk of profit margin contraction and accounts receivable.
To sum up, based on the assumption of stable operation of domestic economy and continuous transformation and upgrading, China's construction machinery industry will not decline significantly at least in the next three years and can maintain steady growth.