Japanese mold industry faces recession

In recent years, the output value of the Japanese mold industry has been decreasing year by year, and the annual demand for molds has dropped to about 410 billion yen. Experts believe that the Japanese mold industry has reached the point where reform is necessary. Japan's mold production capacity accounts for about 40% of the world's, ranking first in the world. However, since the output value reached a peak of 1.87 trillion yen in 2000, it has shown a recession. It is not uncommon for mold factories to be eliminated in a recession, and manufacturers, employees, and business scale have all shrunk significantly. Compared with the peak period, the current number of manufacturers has decreased by about 8.5%, the number of employees has decreased by about 30%, and the decline rate of output value has reached about 11%. In addition, the large-scale development of the mold industry in other Asian countries and regions, the enhancement of cost or technological competitiveness has forced the price of Japanese molds to drop by about 20%. Among the total output value of Japanese molds, the output value of plastic molds is 642.8 billion yen, ranking first, accounting for about 38.8% of the total output value of molds. Plastic molds are used in a variety of industries. In recent years, especially in the fast-growing information technology industry, they have developed rapidly, but they still cannot change the recession trend of the mold industry. The relocation of major customers in industries such as automobiles and semiconductors has forced Japan's mold industry to shift its business focus to overseas. Factors such as high technology and increasingly strict quality requirements have made the Japanese mold industry even worse. In order to get rid of this dilemma, experts suggest that in addition to making more efforts in high-precision machining technology, how to distinguish it from general molds and create high value-added processed products is the direction of the Japanese mold industry, which is also the direction of other Asian countries and countries. new challenges facing the region.