Safety is also one of the considerations for buyers. In the eyes of Westerners, China seems to have thousands of cheap labor flowing from rural areas into manufacturing centers such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Dongguan.
However, the matter is not so simple. Some workers are ignorant of the injection molding machine and do not understand the dangers involved. From November 9th to 12th, at an exhibition held in Dongguan, the center of China's plastic industry and toy manufacturing industry, exhibitors of injection molding machines and robotic arms showcased automatic pick-up machines and robotic arms on the booth.
When it comes to the prospects of the domestic mold market in China, robot manufacturers express both optimism and caution. Dongguan Automation Machinery Co., Ltd. believes that this will be a slow development process.
At present, local customers from China only account for 10% of the sales business of robotic arms, while local customers from Taiwan account for about 30%. The other 30-40% of orders come from Hong Kong. Even in some of China's more developed manufacturing centers, less than 5% of plastic processing plants apply some degree of automation in production.
Sun Liqing, the executive consultant of Shenzhen Plastic Rubber Association, also confirmed that the market penetration rate of robotic arms is less than 5%. He said in an interview at the association office on November 12th that more often than not, there are several workers standing by an injection molding machine, rather than mechanical hands.
Most Chinese companies prefer to continue producing low value-added products rather than investing in equipment, "Sun said Of course, China's manufacturing industry will continue to develop, and the Chinese robotic arm market will reach a certain scale in about a decade. He said that processing factories in developed regions are now considering automated production when facing labor shortages and rising costs. In addition, compared to the heavy manual labor in factories, more and more young people are willing to choose to work in the service industry.
I believe that both existing and future injection molding machines will require robotic arms. One of the current competitors in the Chinese market is robot manufacturers from Japan. The company is currently considering adding assembly lines for servo motor robots in Chinese factories, which are currently being produced in Japan.
He also said that compared to expensive Japanese products, Chinese private plastic product companies usually choose relatively cheap robotic arms produced in Taiwan.
He believes that Chinese customers prefer domestically produced automation machinery. As more and more suppliers enter the Chinese market, the price of injection molding robots has significantly decreased in recent years, and industry profits have also greatly decreased.
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