At the press conference of the China (Beijing) International Construction Machinery, Building Materials Machinery and Mining Machinery Exhibition (BICES 2025) held on the 19th, Su Zimeng, President of the China Construction Machinery Industry Association, introduced the operation of the construction machinery industry in the first half of 2024. He stated that despite facing various factors such as the continuous decline of the domestic real estate industry and changes in the international market environment, the construction machinery industry has maintained an overall stable development trend, with solid progress in high-quality development and fruitful achievements in high-end, intelligent, and green development.
Su Zimeng stated that in the first half of 2024, the import and export trade volume of construction machinery in China reached 27.134 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 3.13%. Among them, the import volume was 1.297 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 1.65%; The export value was 25.837 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 3.38%. The trade surplus was 24.54 billion US dollars, an increase of 867 million US dollars year-on-year.
Specifically, in the first half of the year, the sales of major products in the industry showed a trend of stabilizing at the bottom. The cumulative sales of the twelve major categories of products included in the association's statistics in the first half of the year were 968900 units domestically and internationally, a year-on-year increase of 4.58%; Among them, domestic sales totaled 597100 units, a year-on-year increase of 0.31%; The cumulative export volume was 371700 units, a year-on-year increase of 12.3%. Out of the twelve major product categories, ten categories achieved positive growth in exports, with pavers increasing by 89.5%.
It is worth noting that the industry's transformation towards high-end, intelligent, and green is continuously accelerating. According to the association's statistics, electric construction machinery represented by electric loaders, forklifts, and lifting work platforms have seen significant growth. In the first half of 2024, a total of 5114 electric loaders were sold, a year-on-year increase of 361%; Electric forklifts sold 468557 units in the first half of the year, an increase of 24.2% compared to the same period last year, accounting for 70.8% of the total forklift sales volume; The electric rate of the lifting work platform exceeds 90%. With the significant improvement of research and manufacturing capabilities in batteries, electric drives, and control systems, electric off highway dump trucks, excavators, cranes, bulldozers, concrete machinery, and others have been mass-produced and put into use. A batch of large-scale and intelligent engineering machinery products are constantly being put into the market, playing an important role in major engineering projects and infrastructure construction.
Looking ahead, Su Zimeng stated that despite the complex and ever-changing external environment, the construction machinery industry has strong resilience and development potential. With the increasing macroeconomic regulation and control efforts of the country, it is expected that the overall economic operation of the construction machinery industry will continue to maintain a stable recovery and steady progress trend in the second half of the year.
