US machine tool market offers big potential for suppliers

The USA is the fourth largest machine tool producer in the world and the eighth largest export market. For the German machine tool industry, they rank second among the most important export markets. At EMO Hannover, US companies ranked sixth among foreign exhibitors. This list already illustrates quite well the standing of US manufacturers in the world concert of the machine tool industry.

Despite the impressive in-house production, a large part of the annual US machinery demand is imported from abroad due to the high consumption. About one-fifth of imported machines come from Germany. With a market volume of 9.3 billion euros, the US machine tool market is the second largest in the world.

Länderprofil USA (Picture: VDW)

In 2021, the German machine tool industry exported machinery (including parts and services) worth €972 million (up 12 percent year-on-year) to the United States. The country thus represents the most important sales market after China. The USA accounts for 12.1 percent of all German exports. In 2020, the figure was still 12.5 percent.

Cutting machine tools dominate US production

The US itself produced machine tools as well as parts and services with a total value of 6.35 billion euros in 2021 (up 39 percent from the previous year). This makes the country the fourth largest producer in the world. The global market share in production is 8.5 percent (global production in 2021: 74.8 billion euros). At around 77 percent (4.89 billion euros), metal-cutting and metal-removing machine tools account for the lion's share of U.S. production. Forming machine tools accounted for a much smaller share of total production at 23 percent (1.46 billion euros).

Export hit forming technology

US machine tool export volume in 2021 was approximately 2.44 billion euros (up 21 percent from the previous year). This meant that almost 40 percent of domestic production was destined for sale to foreign countries. The export share for forming machine tools was 46 percent, or 44 million euros, significantly larger than for metal-cutting machines at 19 percent, or 108 million euros.

Major part of demand is imported

In 2021, machine tools (including parts and services) worth 5.39 billion euros (up 11 percent from the previous year) were imported. Thus, a large part of the U.S. demand for machine tools was met by imports from abroad. The German share of all US imports was approximately 18 percent in 2021.

Market volume again far above crisis year 2020

The total volume of the US machine tool market in 2021 was almost 9.3 billion euros, 26 percent higher than in the crisis year of 2020. Cutting and ablative machines accounted for 7.0 billion euros, almost 76 percent of the total. In terms of individual machine groups, the market for machining centers (2.09 billion euros) was the largest, followed by lathes (1.06 billion euros) and laser machines (816 million euros).