With China's continuous economic growth, the domestic mold industry has been hailed as a global manufacturing powerhouse due to its massive annual import and export totals. China imports nearly 1 billion USD worth of molds annually, with precision, large-scale, complex, and long-life molds accounting for the majority. With national support for autonomous products, imports will gradually decrease, bringing new development opportunities to domestic brands.
As China's mold industry continues to evolve, the demand and requirements for mold products are also gradually increasing. The domestic market's demand for high-end molds is growing, and the development of the home appliance, automotive, and plastic products industries has placed higher requirements on mold cutting tools, providing broad market space for the industry. While the total value of China's mold imports and exports is on an upward trend in terms of quantity, the exported molds are mainly mid-to-low-end products, and the industry's influence in the global market is limited. These issues restrict the sustainable development of the mold industry and have become stumbling blocks in its development path.
Over the past two years, many mold enterprises have recognized their own problems and are actively seeking effective solutions, such as intensive management, continuously improving management levels, enhancing overall management efficiency, optimizing departmental structures, and improving professional qualities of employees. However, overall, many problems still exist in these enterprises. In the future, the proportion of high-efficiency CNC machine tools in Chinese factories will increase year by year, and the demand for efficient and advanced tools will rapidly rise accordingly. China's tool industry must change its concepts, vigorously develop the production of efficient and advanced tools, and pay attention to after-sales service while focusing on sales volume, striving to innovate and capture more market share. Domestic molds must meet user needs in terms of quality and delivery time. Relevant enterprises should actively transform their business models, utilize modern networks, accelerate technological innovation, broaden sales channels, tap into enterprise potential, and actively explore both domestic and international markets.
According to the "2016-2021 China Mold Industry Development Prospect Forecast and Investment Strategic Planning Analysis Report" by the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, in future industry development, technological innovation is fundamental and technical enhancement is necessary. These are the most critical conditions in high-speed industry development and market demand. To highlight the comparative advantage in the international mold market, China's mold industry must move towards the path of large-scale, digital intelligent, and eco-friendly energy-saving molds, making the high-end positioning of molds a new way for the industry to seek development.