Asia: The road ahead PART 2

Here’s the part 2 of International Metalworking News for Asia’s Outlook Report. Learn how industry leaders and other senior executives view their industry's competitiveness around Asia, including insights that examine the highly complex forces driving the current and future of metalworking manufacturing and many of the structural changes reshaping Asia’s economy.

Dr. Hans-Peter Laubscher,

Managing Director, TRUMPF Pte Ltd

We are convinced that especially the demand for technologies such as machines for laser cutting with solid state lasers, laser welding, punching and bending will continue to grow within the next year. Also complementing the technology with its corresponding software and services gets more and more important. In our business field of laser technology we expect that demand will increase in the microprocessing sector, where countless new application possibilities for our ultrashort pulse lasers are conceivable. Beside that we see an increasing demand for high power fibre laser applications.

Investing heavily in R&D always has brought TRUMPF one step ahead of its competitors when it comes to innovative technologies. Last year for example the development ratio R&D quota lay at 9.0 percent of total sales. These innovations we then pass to our customers offering them a competitive advantage in their respective markets and setting new standards in many sectors.

For this year in particular we expect a shift towards higher-quality exportable products in emerging countries, especially in China. That will make the requirements placed on sophisticated production technology even more stringent. This opens up good opportunities for German producers to benefit over-proportionately from changes in procurement behaviour.

With our solution for the laser cutting market, we are very well prepared to offer products for the so-called entry-level market as well as high-end products. Our recent innovation of “Bright line fiber” e.g. enables cutting qualities which could be achieved in the past only by CO2 Laser.

Above all, TRUMPF expands its already good position in the Asian market through the acquisition of a majority stake of approximately 72 percent of the Chinese machine tool manufacturer Jiangsu Jinfangyuan CNC Machine Company Limited (JFY) in Yangzhou. Thereby TRUMPF can strengthen its presence in the world’s most important mechanical engineering market. This acquisition is giving us access to the market's extremely dynamic middle segment.

TRUMPF expects a moderate positive development of the sales and growth in Asia.Our machine tools division will offer numerous new products. We see great development potential in EUV lithography, which is just establishing itself in the market.And especially “Bright Line fibre” is the name of the latest successful TRUMPF development in the 2D laser cutting sector. This technology turns solid-state laser machines into universal systems. Until now, solid state lasers had a reputation for being highly productive with thin sheets although producing slightly inferior edge quality with thicker stainless steel and aluminium, along with increased burr formation on the underside.

Dr. Christian Braun,

Managing Director,

DMG MORI South East Asia

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