Speaking about the development of the heavy machinery industry, he believes that under the background of the state controlling new capacity and resolving outdated capacity, new projects in related industries such as metallurgy, non-ferrous metals, and cement will inevitably decrease, and technological transformation projects will increase significantly. Therefore, heavy machinery enterprises must make great efforts to innovate and focus on developing new energy-saving and environmentally friendly products. Some will transform into specialized, distinctive, refined, and advanced component suppliers, or become system integrators or production service providers offering overall solutions.

Development Has Reached a Critical Stage

According to statistics from the branch of China Heavy Machinery Industry Association, from January to August 2013, the main business revenue growth rate of the heavy machinery industry was 11.5%, of which the metallurgical machinery growth rate was 1.72%. From January to September 2013, the output growth rate of metallurgical machinery was 3.3%. After years of development, China's metallurgical equipment manufacturing industry has formed a complete system covering education, scientific research, design, manufacturing, and services. Major metallurgical technical equipment, from main complete equipment such as smelting, rolling, and finishing to auxiliary complete equipment such as pelletizing and sintering, coking and gas production, and material handling, can all be designed and manufactured domestically, and some equipment has reached the world's advanced level.

At present, a number of leading products in the industry, such as complete equipment for cold and hot continuous rolling, extra-large heavy forging equipment, large crushing and grinding equipment, fully mechanized coal mining equipment, complete equipment for large bulk material handling, and large port machinery, have reached the "world's most advanced" level in technical specifications.

Since the second half of 2011, the development growth rate of China's heavy machinery industry has begun to decline significantly. In 2012, the heavy machinery industry achieved main business revenue of 980.5 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate dropping to 11.3%, of which the main business revenue of metallurgical machinery was 116.27 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of only 2%. In 2012, the total output of metallurgical machinery was 1.38 million tons, with a year-on-year growth rate of 7.6%, including 734,000 tons of smelting equipment and 646,000 tons of rolling equipment.

"Currently, China's heavy machinery industry is facing a very severe situation," Li Jing believes.

On the one hand, the heavy machinery industry must directly face the "two reductions" in raw material industries such as steel, electrolytic aluminum, and cement:

The first "reduction" refers to reducing total capacity. The state will adopt methods of eliminating outdated capacity and merging scales to reduce total capacity and the number of production enterprises. In particular, the "Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Resolving Serious Overcapacity Contradictions" clearly proposes to reduce outdated ironmaking and steelmaking production capacity by 15 million tons each by 2015, and to carry out a new round of work to resolve overcapacity in the metallurgical industry.

The second "reduction" refers to energy conservation and emission reduction, reducing energy consumption and solid, liquid, and gas waste emissions in the metallurgical industry production process, comprehensively utilizing waste resources in the production process, and turning waste into treasure. The large-scale smog weather that began earlier this year has put raw material industries represented by steel and cement under pressure. Li Jing said: "We cannot reduce environmental pollution by importing all raw materials; we can only reduce energy consumption and emissions through energy conservation, emission reduction, and comprehensive utilization."

On the other hand, there is almost no possibility for China's heavy machinery industry to adopt large-scale, systematic technology introduction for technological upgrading. "After nearly 10 years of development, China has mastered some design and manufacturing technologies for heavy machinery, and some products have ranked among the world's advanced. Foreign countries will no longer sell advanced technology to us. In the future, we can only rely on ourselves to carry out technological innovation, research and develop, and integrate equipment with our own intellectual property rights," Li Jing emphasized.

Facing the subjective and objective development situations at home and abroad, Li Jing believes that the heavy machinery industry should closely focus on the needs of energy conservation and emission reduction, quality improvement, variety expansion, and industrial upgrading in the metallurgical industry, closely integrate with metallurgical processes, absorb mature science and technology, accelerate the improvement of self-innovation soft power, and promote the sustainable and healthy development of the industry.

Analysis of Five Major Innovation Directions

Li Jing believes that heavy machinery enterprises should carry out technological innovation oriented towards efficient, durable, energy-saving, and environmentally friendly heavy machinery products, and can work from the following five aspects.

First, strive to upgrade existing products and ultimately achieve product upgrading through continuous improvement. "Although we have made great progress in complete machine design, complete sets, and integration, key components such as reducers, bearings, hydraulic parts, motors, electrical components, and automatic controls on the main machines are still equipped with foreign products. The localization of basic components requires main machine design, scientific research units, and users to join forces, propose technical requirements, and cooperate with component enterprises to carry out research on key components."

It is recommended that enterprises focus on market segments in the metallurgical industry, expand product varieties, improve product quality requirements, adopt advanced technologies such as mechanical, hydraulic, electrical and automatic control, and information technology, transform existing equipment, and achieve the integration of industrialization and informatization.

Second, research and develop energy-saving and emission-reduction production unit equipment. In addition to carrying out energy-saving and emission-reduction research on main machine products, the heavy machinery industry also needs to increase the development of complete sets of equipment for the collection and reuse of waste gas, waste liquid, and solid waste, as well as emission reduction and resource recovery. For example: flue gas emission reduction, waste heat power generation from blast furnaces and coke ovens, steel slag reuse, wastewater recycling, etc. Equipment integration and manufacturing in this area have a broad market and are forming different forms of equipment manufacturing and environmental protection, energy recovery and utilization service formats.

It should be noted that the operation of these equipments also involves energy consumption, material consumption, and capital consumption, which also requires the industry to make great efforts to research and innovate new processes and equipment, forming new growth points for the metallurgical equipment manufacturing industry.

Third, develop intelligent equipment. Under the circumstances of increasingly tight human resources in China's heavy industry, rising costs, and unstable product quality caused by human factors, there is a certain market space for developing intelligent products.

Fourth, research and develop new metallurgical process equipment. The innovation of metallurgical production processes and the progress of metallurgical equipment promote and develop each other. For example, the application of continuous casting technology in steel production, jointly promoted by the metallurgical and machinery industries, has greatly promoted the development of metallurgical technology.

Fifth, track metallurgical process research and develop new equipment. Metallurgical science and technology are constantly progressing and developing, such as smelting reduction ironmaking process technology and short-process rolling process technology. New processes for waste reduction, disposal, and reuse are constantly developing. If industrialized and mature, they may bring disruptive changes to the metallurgical industry. Equipment manufacturing enterprises should pay close attention to the development trends of metallurgical science, actively cooperate with process technology research, participate in the research and development of intermediate test and semi-industrial test equipment for metallurgical research units, and gather strength for the development of the metallurgical equipment manufacturing industry.