With the accelerated advancement of China's new-type urbanization construction and the implementation of intelligent construction policies, the steel bar processing equipment industry is ushering in unprecedented development opportunities. The latest industry report shows that the market size of China's steel bar processing equipment is expected to rise from 15 billion yuan in 2023 to 20 billion yuan in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 12%. Digitalization, intelligence, and green development have become the core directions of the industry's transformation.

Technological Breakthroughs Reshape Production Models

In the production workshop of Shandong Zhongji Luyuan Machinery Manufacturing Co., Ltd., a new generation of intelligent steel bar processing equipment is demonstrating strong technological iteration capabilities. The high-speed railway large box girder positioning network welding workstation developed by the company realizes fully unmanned intervention in 12 processes including straightening, cutting, and welding through the coordinated operation of dual 6-axis manipulators and 12 welding machines. Its original mold-free production technology enables the servo system to have an adjustable spacing range of 1000-6000mm for the base plate, with the welding error controlled within ±2mm. The daily production capacity is 100% higher than that of traditional equipment, and the processing cost per ton has decreased by 83%.

To address the challenge of high-strength steel bar processing, the intelligent bar shearing production line adopts 31.5MPa high-pressure hydraulic buffer technology, which can shear 6 pieces of 32mm threaded steel at one time with a shearing frequency of 20 times per minute. Combined with the intelligent sorting and storage system, the warehouse space utilization rate is increased by 60%. Additionally, the magnetic suction feeding four-head shearing and bending workstation realizes the full-process closed operation from raw material feeding to finished product stacking, with a daily production capacity of 50 tons—3.3 times that of traditional bending centers—and annual labor cost savings of over 860,000 yuan. These technological innovations have been applied on a large scale in 43 key projects such as the Nanchang-Ganzhou High-Speed Railway and Xiongan Hub, enabling each beam yard to save more than 2 million yuan in annual labor costs.

Market Pattern Shows Gradient Growth

The dual impetus from policy and demand sides has continuously optimized the market structure. Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that in 2023, the market penetration rate of high-end equipment such as CNC steel bar straightening and cutting machines and intelligent bending centers reached 42%, an increase of 18 percentage points compared with 2020, and is expected to exceed 60% in 2025. In the regional market, the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta economic belts have formed core markets with an annual demand of over 4 billion yuan. Benefiting from the inclination of infrastructure special bonds, the scale of equipment procurement bidding in central and western provinces such as Ningxia and Sichuan has increased by more than 25% year-on-year.

The diversification of demand structure has injected new momentum into the industry. The accelerated construction of indemnificatory housing has driven the shipment volume of Grade 3 steel bar processing equipment to grow against the trend by 14.3%, while the demand for super high-rise buildings has spurred orders for large-tonnage straightening and cutting machines of 800kN and above. The new energy infrastructure sector has performed particularly prominently: the steel bar processing volume of a single photovoltaic foundation pile project is 260 times that of traditional residential buildings, driving the annual sales growth rate of mobile processing units to exceed 45%. The overseas market has also achieved impressive results: in 2023, the industry's export volume exceeded 900 million US dollars for the first time, with a market share of 31% in Southeast Asia. By 2024, the supporting orders for engineering equipment along the "Belt and Road" have exceeded 1.2 billion yuan.

A Transformation Path with Coexisting Opportunities and Challenges

While the industry is developing rapidly, it also faces multiple challenges. Fluctuations in raw material prices have brought cost pressures: in 2023, the proportion of steel costs rose to 58%, and the skyrocketing arrival price of iron ore in the fourth quarter led to a sharp monthly cost increase for equipment manufacturers. The squeeze from international brands in the high-end market and the accelerated technological iteration have also forced local enterprises to speed up their innovation pace. In response, leading enterprises have reduced production costs by 15%-20% through modular design and increased R&D investment. The R&D investment intensity of listed companies in the industry has increased to 4.6% of their sales revenue.

Policy support provides a strong guarantee for the industry's transformation. The "Guidelines on the Coordinated Development of Intelligent Construction and Construction Industrialization" issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development promotes the in-depth integration of equipment with BIM systems, increasing material utilization rate from 89% to 96%. Special subsidies for intelligent manufacturing cover 30% of the cost of equipment intelligent transformation, and enterprises certified as "green factories" can enjoy a 15% reduction in corporate income tax. Looking ahead to the next five years, the industry will accelerate the formation of an ecological closed loop of "intelligent equipment + cloud service platform". The R&D investment proportion in new products such as carbon fiber-reinforced composite material processing equipment will rise to 8.5%, and the total investment in intelligent transformation of the entire industry is expected to reach 3.5 billion yuan in 2025.

Industry experts point out that with the in-depth integration of technologies such as 5G and digital twins with equipment manufacturing, the steel bar processing equipment industry will continue to make breakthroughs in the direction of "fully unmanned workshops" and "remote operation and maintenance", injecting core momentum into the high-quality development of China's infrastructure.