The world market of mechanical industry machines

The world market of the mechanical industry machinery is a sensitive thermometer of the global economic situation. On one hand, the mechanical industry represents a significant part of the industry in many developed countries. On the other hand, investment in machinery reacts relatively quickly to changes in demand, in the availability of financial resources and, generally, to animal spirits .
The article The investment cycles of the mechanical industry in the world shows an analysis of the recent investment cycles in mechanical industry machines. In this article we use the following animation to:

• measure¹ the importance of the mechanical industry of the various world countries;
• analyze the path, which has led to the current countries ranking.

The historical analysis of the purchases evolution of mechanical industry machines in the last 15 years highlights that:

• At the beginning of this century the United States were the first among the greatest mechanical countries, followed by Germany, replicating the post-war ranking. Besides China succeeded in competing with Italy for the third position;
• In 10 years China gained the first position, which is still holding, leaving behind United States and Germany;
• In addition to China, in Asia, Japan has had historically a relevant position. However, recently the mechanical industry is developing in South Korea, Taiwan, India and Thailand and it is getting bigger and bigger;
• Concerning Europe, only Germany and Italy are still in the top 5, thanks to a significant average annual growth. Conversely, UK and France are progressively losing their relative importance.

To sum up, in the early twenty years of this centuty, the core of global mechanical industry turned to be the East Asia Area (China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan). Outside of this area, only the United States and Germany and Italy, in Europe, seem to play a leading role in the global mechanical industry.

1) Measurements of the mechanical machinery market for several years and for different countries are extracted from the datamart CountryData, available in the Analytics section. This datamart contains for each product code both the measures concerning the foreign trade flows (Exports and Imports) and an estimate of the Production and the Apparent Demand. Apparent Demand is the measure used in this analysis. It can be considered a good approximation of the market level.
The product codes considered in this article are all those relating to the Machines for working metals (presses, bending machines, etc.) and to the Machine tools for metals (lathes, laser machines, milling machines, drilling machines, etc., excluding machines for producing printed circuits).