According to the latest statistics released by China Die & Mold Industry Association, in 2015, China's mold market reached 155 billion yuan, ranking first in the world for the first time. The comprehensive competitiveness of the mold industry entered the top 10 in the world. High end intelligent mold professional towns and high-end mold production bases developed rapidly. A few cities including Dongguan have become large-scale precision mold industry clusters in China Group production base, shows that the mold industry is accelerating the transformation and upgrading through innovation.

Mould is known as "the mother of manufacturing industry". In recent years, affected by the macroeconomic downturn, the growth rate of the global mold market has slowed down significantly. However, in Dongguan, the output value of the mold manufacturing industry represented by Hengli, Chang'an and other towns has maintained a continuous growth of more than 20% every year. The phenomenon of reverse growth of the industry has attracted extensive attention from all walks of life at home and abroad.

"Almost every year I go to Dongguan for research, and obviously feel that the local mold industry has developed better and better in recent years, and is gradually becoming stronger and more sophisticated." According to Wu BINGSHU, Secretary General of China Die & Mold Industry Association, as a global manufacturing city, Dongguan's strong manufacturing foundation provides fertile soil and continuous innovation power for the innovation and development of mold manufacturing industry. In recent years, Dongguan mold industry adheres to the leading role of high-end, emerging in China, becoming an innovative model for the implementation of "made in China 2025" strategy.

Globalization brings wisdom and gathers industrial resources

In the 1980s and 1990s, a large number of Hong Kong and Taiwan enterprises engaged in "three processing and one compensation" flooded into Dongguan, which brought the seeds of mold industry development. Li Guangdong, assistant president of Dongguan Hardware Mold Industry Association, said that at that time, almost every factory had a mold making department, which made molds for toys, plastics, hardware products and other products. The core technology was often mastered by technicians sent from Hong Kong or Taiwan headquarters. Many of the apprentices taught by these technicians have become local The mainstay of mould industry.

Li qishang, chairman of Changan Shangming Mould Technology Co., Ltd., is one of them. In 1994, only 19-year-old Li qishang came to Chang'an alone. He started as an ordinary worker and traveled to several factories to learn mold manufacturing technology. His salary also increased from the initial 2300 yuan to tens of thousands yuan.

"Since 1998, many private mold small enterprises have sprung up and started to process mold parts. Later, in order to reduce costs, manufacturing factories gradually cancelled the mold department, which objectively promoted the independent development of the mold industry." In 2002, after learning the technology, Li qishang resigned to buy two machines, hired two or three employees, rented a small shop, and began to engage in the processing of hardware mold accessories. In a year, he made several hundred thousand yuan.

At this time, hardware mold production in Dongguan has become a prairie fire. According to the data of Dongguan Hardware mold industry cluster planning, there were nearly 3000 individual businesses in Chang'an town at that time, accounting for nearly 20% of the local individual businesses.

"Dongguan's mold manufacturing industry started from the processing link, and more decentralized operation. Since the beginning of the new century, with the group development of industry associations and the active guidance of the government, mold manufacturing has begun to transform to centralized operation, and constantly extends to the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, which makes the industrial format and competitiveness constantly strengthened." According to the relevant person in charge of Dongguan Municipal Bureau of economy and information technology, since 2003, Dongguan mold industry has entered the fast lane of specialization and centralized management, and has successively emerged such group specialized trading market platforms as Evergreen International Machinery Hardware Plaza and Huiying International Mold City, forming a complete mold manufacturing system from mold design to production to terminal processing.

Through the professional market and exhibition platform, Dongguan mold industry has attracted many top global industry giants to participate in it. According to incomplete statistics, world-famous mold related enterprises, including Swiss archichamir group, Belgium sheet metal king HACO group, Germany DMG, Japan Mitsubishi Electric and other world-famous mold related enterprises have set up branches or technical service centers in Dongguan, continuously injecting new vitality into the improvement of local mold product development level.