Forecasting Japan’s FA industry in 2022 (2/3)

News Digest Publishing, the company that publishes SEISANZAI Japan, announced its forecast for machine tool orders in Japan in 2022. News Digest Publishing held an event at the Nagoya Congress Center in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, for executives from the factory automation industry and others, and announced the FA industry forecast such as machine tool orders.

Shu Yasumi, editor-in-chief of the company, forecasted that the production amount in 2022 will be 1 trillion yen, up 11.1% from the previous year. Japan’s machine tool production amount in 2021 seems to have increased 24.3% from the previous year to 900 billion yen. Due to the shortage of machine tool parts, the production amount in 2021 did not reach the 2019 results before the COVID-19 disaster. Although the number of machine tools produced increased, the unit price of the machine decreased. This is thought to be due to the fact that small and medium-sized machines with relatively short delivery times were shipped and delivered ahead of the rest.

In 2022, large machines and  highly customized machines for which orders and inquiries were received during 2021 will be shipped sequentially. As a result, the total production volume will decline slightly and machine unit prices will rise. In addition, demand for machine tools with automation systems has been high in recent years. The unit price of orders tends to rise.

The most serious problem is the shortage of parts. Due to longer delivery times and delays in parts, the order backlog for machine tools has been accumulating since the spring of 2021. The order backlog in 2018, which was the highest ever, was around 820 billion yen, and it is likely to reach that level in the first half of this year.

In the next article, SEISANZAI Japan will publish the import and export outlook for machine tools in Japan in 2022.