Industry Forecast
The Trend of the Japanese Investment Casting Industry
by Hiroshi Yokota, International Group Japan Foundry Society, Inc. F
igure 1 shows the change in production weight and sales after 2006. In 2009, both production weight and sales simultaneously decreased due to the global recession, but
since 2010 there has been a
recovery trend every year since then. In 2015, the production weight of automobiles decreased by 12.5%, but the sales increased by 2.8%. However, the production weight of gas turbines fell by 17.6% and 13.5% in sales, so the impact was greatly influenced. Total 2015 production weight fell by 12.6%, and net sales decreased 4.5% year on year to 54 billion yen.
Sales for automobiles, aircraft and
weapons showed steady throughout the year, but sales for gas turbines decreased in the second half. Automotive accounted for 41.9% of 2015 sales, surpassing gas turbine, which occupied the top position in previous years. In 2015, gas turbine dropped to second position at 38.0%. The outline of these is shown below.
Gas Turbine
Production weight of investment cast- ings for gas turbine was 751 tons, a de- crease of 17.6% from the previous year, and sales also decreased by 13.5%. Even in this global market, the slump in the Chinese economy, the downturn in crude oil prices and difficulty in secur- ing financing in developing countries begun caused this market to slump.
General Machinery Production weight was 723 tons, a de- crease of 13.7% from the previous year, and sales were down 3.6% to 5 billion yen. Reductions in pumps, valves, etc. are affected.
Automobile
Production weight was 4,029 tons, down 22.5% from the previous year, but
22 ❘ January 2017 ® Figure 1: Changes in production scale of the investment casting products in Japan.
Japan
Figure 2: The trend of sales by month and application by 2015 in the year.
net sales increased by 2.8% to 22.6 bil- lion yen. Production of turbocharger hot wheels saw favor in this sector, and sales per unit weight has improved due to an increase in demand for turbocharged ve- hicles in the world market. This trend is expected to continue in the future. The Japanese investment casting industry, which accounts for 60% of the world’s
turbocharger hot wheel production, is continuing to improve production sys- tems to support rising demand.
Aircraft
Production weight was 90 tons, almost unchanged from the previous year, and net sales increased by 3.8% to 3.16 billion yen. The latest jet engines to be
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