Development of the Wheat Harvester Industry is Stable in China

Under the support of the preferential agricultural policies, in terms of the wheat harvester industry, the capability of independent innovation enhances, the step of industrial transformation speeds up and the industrial agglomeration effect emerges, thus making outstanding contributions to improvement of China’s wheat mechanization level. From the perspective of the development trend, the whole wheat harvester industry is still in a better development opportunity period in history and is stably carrying forward the development goals of the middle and high-end industries and market.

The wheat harvester industry shows a steady development trend

(1) The industrial focusing effort is showing. China has established and perfected the long-term mechanism for input of “agriculture, farmer and rural area” and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has issued the No. 1 files related to agriculture continuously for 12 years, thus the input of “agriculture, farmer and rural area” has kept a higher level in history all the time. The allowance funds for agricultural machinery has increased to 23.65 billion yuan in 2015 from 0.07 billion yuan in 2004, which powerfully promotes the development of the harvest machinery industry. From the perspective of the geographical distribution, China has formed the wheat harvester industrial clusters in Shandong, Anhui and Henan Provinces etc. and constructed the industrial pattern of orderly development. From the perspective of the industrial pattern, China has not had the enterprises that can manufacture wheat harvester products independently. There are 8 enterprises with the manufacturing capability of 3 kinds of harvest machinery including wheat, paddy and corn harvest machinery, 5 enterprises with the manufacturing capability of 2 kinds of harvest machinery including paddy and corn harvest machinery, and 11 enterprises with the manufacturing capability of 2 kinds of harvest machinery including wheat and corn harvest machinery, which is able to support the harvest demands of the grain crops in China. From the perspective of the industrial value chain, the domestic main enterprises start from the wheat harvester industry, which promotes the diversification of the harvest machinery industry. The industrial technical platform is promoting stably, thus the actual difference between the China’s technological level and the international advanced technological level is being reduced constantly.

(2) The quality promotion is enhancing stably. By mean of comprehensive judgment, China’s wheat harvester products are rapidly developing towards the large and middle scale, medium and high-end and intelligentization and the industry is still in the growth period. Firstly, in terms of the technical application level, the domestic wheat harvester mainly adopts three kinds of technical platforms, namely, for the machinery with the feed quantity lower than 7 kg/s, the flow cutting roller plus horizontal axial-flow roller threshing separation technology is mainly adopted; for the machinery with the feed quantity above 7 kg/s, the flow cutting roller plus longitudinal axial-flow single or double-roller threshing separation technology is mainly adopted; and the single longitudinal axial-flow roller threshing separation technology is also adopted in China, which meet demands of different users. Secondly, from the perspective of the development practice, the research & development and manufacturing level of wheat harvester of domestic enterprises increases significantly; the new wheat harvester products with the large feed quantity appear on the market constantly and the research & development and manufacturing capability of 10 kg/s and 12 kg/s longitudinal axial-flow products improves stably. The product reliability and MTBF increase significantly and the problems such as blocking of the unloading cylinder, fault of the clutch and high temperature of the engine are solved effectively, which basically is able to meet operating requirements of the users. Thirdly, in terms of service condition, demands for the longitudinal axial-flow products is enlarged constantly in northeast China and other large-parcel operation organizations and the middle and high-end products make the substantial breakthrough, which occupies about 3% space; the market share of horizontal axial-flow products in the traditional market of the winter wheat area is still maintained at about 97% and the conformity of product quality and agriculture improves significantly.

 (3) The market pattern optimizes continuously. The harvest machinery enterprises, sales volume, time and user competition pattern is relatively concentrated in China. In recent years, the sales volume of harvest machinery has been maintained at more than 40 thousand sets, the characteristic of “years with the large sales volume and year with the small sales volume” are changed and the market has entered the mature period. Firstly, the sales enterprises are concentrated and the competition pattern forms basically. The sales volume of the leading three enterprises in the industry accounts for about 85% of that of the whole industry; the competitive ranking is stable and the breakthrough cannot be made in the differentiation advantages among enterprises in short time. Secondly, the sales areas are concentrated. The winter wheat areas such as Henan, Shandong, Anhui, Hebei and Jiangsu etc. become the main sales areas. The sales volume of these areas accounts for about 90% of that of the total sales volume, thus these areas become the important targeted markets of the enterprises. Thirdly, the sales time is concentrated. The market demand for the wheat harvesters still keeps the high-level operation in China. Over the years, the market sales volume of the first half year has accounted for nearly 85% of that of the whole year, and the market sales volume of the first half year is basically consistent with agriculture demand of the wheat harvester of the first half year in the winter wheat area; the agricultural demand product quantity of the last half year in the spring wheat areas and paddy and wheat rotation areas is about 15%. Fourthly, the sales machine types are concentrated. Influenced by subsidies orientation, the 6 kg/s machine types mainly are the machine types sold most in 2014 and 2015 and occupy the main position of the market with the market share of about 95%. Fifthly, the users are concentrated. The cross-area operation becomes a unique bright point of the wheat harvester. In China, the land circulation speeds up and the agricultural machinery cooperative associations and the family farms etc. develop rapidly. The agricultural machinery cooperative association and the family farm have been become the main purchasing objects of the large and middle-sized products and their market share has been above 60%.

Development of the wheat harvesters needs breakthrough.

As one of the outstanding products to promote China’s agricultural mechanization, the wheat harvester still has a larger promotion space in many aspects including development quality, innovation capability, growth experience etc. Large scale but weak strength is still the bottleneck needing to be broken through by the industry and the industry is also confronted with the practice challenges brought by the industrial breakthrough, talent cultivation and commercial mode.

(1) The industrial breakthrough lacks the innovation driving. Due to weak innovation and research & development ability and insufficient innovative creation, the overall industrial structure is still in the middle and low level of the international division of labor and industrial chain.

Firstly, there is the difference in the industrial level. The core technology is difficult to be broken through or it may be controlled by people, which is the crucial reason why the wheat harvester industry is large in scale but weak in strength. The multinational enterprises have possessed the intelligent, middle and high-end and large and middle-sized series wheat harvester products; in China, the wheat harvester industry is mainly the middle and low-end industry and has middle and small-sized products; the homogenization phenomenon of the low-efficiency resources is very serious and the ability of independent innovation needs to be improved further. Secondly, the manufacturing ability needs to be improved. The core parts manufacturing and the key technology of reliability still have a larger development space and there is an obvious difference between the domestic and foreign similar kinds of products. The practice application of flexible manufacturing system (FMS), networked manufacturing system and information management etc. needs to be improved rapidly. The comprehensive application level of mechanics-electronics-hydraulics integration technology still has a larger upgrade space. The application strength of the hydrostatic drive technology is not insufficient. The steering drive axle for large-sized combine harvester, electro-hydraulic suspension system controlled by the bus and other key parts still need to be imported from foreign countries. The capability of independent innovation in aspects of advanced technology, material and hydraulic pressure is insufficient. The industry is confronted with three prominent problems, that is, excess overall production capacity, improper product structure and the situation that the high-end application field cannot achieve the self-supporting completely. Thirdly, the product quality needs to be improved. The foreign same kinds of advanced large-sized products widely adopt the CPU processing technology, bus control technology, laser measurement technology, GPS system location technology and satellite remote sensing technology etc. to achieve the intelligent control of the agricultural machinery equipment. While, in China, the wheat harvester products with the large feed quantity are in sore need of promotion of high performance, differentiation, functionalization and intelligentization so as to promote the industrial transformation, upgrade and sustainable development.

(2) The talent cultivation lacks the first-mover mode. The actual problems in the aspect of the industrial talents include lack of the middle and high-level talents and the lag of the human resources training mechanism, which become the key factor to restrict the enterprise development, and the too fast flow of the existing talents, which is not conducive to enterprise development.

From the perspective of practice, the total quantities, structure, whole quality and skills of talents required by the development of the agricultural machinery enterprises are difficult to provide motivation for the enterprises to transform from the speed type expansion to the quality type increase.

(3) The commercial competition mode needs to be constructed.

At present, the internal and external environments of the enterprises have changed, thus, enterprises need to make their enterprise resources and the competition ability consistent, grasp the industrial and regional market changes, grasp and cope with the differentiated marketing strategies and operation thinking of various competitors, grasp the essence of the market opportunity points and break through the problems of the actual marketing,

Firstly, enterprises lack the tendency and pertinency research of the preferential agricultural policies, competitors and user relations, and the situation that the enterprises are self-centered is very serious. The enterprises do not grasp the change rule and trend of the external environment and are not able to recognize and grasp the development opportunity exiting in the new round of policies, industries and market rule changes. Secondly, some agricultural machinery enterprises gradually adopt the e-commerce and Wechat and other business platforms, but, affected by the regional agency and regional allowance etc., the using degree in only in the user information management stage. Thirdly, it is “dynamic” in interior of the enterprises but “static” outside the enterprises. In the aspect of the competition concept, some agricultural machinery enterprises still rely on sales of products rather than transfer of value. “Dynamic” refers to carry out promotion in the aspect of the external force of the sales personnel of the enterprises. “Static” refers to lack the powerful promotion of the internal cause of the terminal caused by the channel dealers. In terms of the competition value, affected by these aspects including product resources, enterprise cultivation and sales habit etc., some enterprises mainly rely on the promotion activities based on the product price and service, lack the plan action for providing the practical solutions for the agricultural equipment and do not vitalize the dealers’ initiative from the aspects of system and mechanism. Fourthly, in the aspect of the user maintenance, lack the user management, maintenance and popularization with the agricultural mechanization service organization and also lack the integration and research in aspects of the agricultural machinery order operation, intermediary agent information service , cross-area service and agricultural machinery leasing etc.