Spain's largest machine tool manufacturer has acquired land in Shanghai.
At first glance, this fits the standard narrative of "foreign investors voting with their feet to show optimism about China," sounding like something that should be featured on the CCTV News Broadcast.
Danobat has just acquired a plot of land in the Xinzhuang Industrial Park in Minhang district. Its Asia-Pacific headquarters has obtained a construction permit, with a total investment of approximately CNY 100 million and an annual production value of CNY 180 million upon reaching full capacity.
Founded in 1954, Danobatgroup is the largest domestic machine tool manufacturer in Spain and one of the major machine tool production enterprises in Europe. In 2024, its revenue reached EUR 344 million (approximately USD 380 million), with 1,459 employees and exports accounting for over 90%.
A Spanish company, and an established machine tool enterprise at that, coming to China to build its Asia-Pacific headquarters feels somewhat like a flashback to the early days of the Reform and Opening-up.
Here comes the question: China's machine tool output value has long been the first in the world, and the industry has passed the era of "introducing a large number of foreign enterprises." Spain's machine tool output value ranks tenth globally, far behind China, Japan, Germany, and the United States. Why is it still coming?
The answer lies in four words: choke points in niche segments.
Danobat's true trump card is the "high-speed rotating grinding of blade tips" for aero-engine blades.
The top ring of the engine blades must be ground accurately and stably under high-speed rotation of tens of thousands of revolutions per minute. Traditional methods involve turning, manual filing, and adding alternative tooling, which fall far short in terms of precision and consistency. Danobat's technology features high rigidity, good consistency, and high machining precision. The key is that it withstands the centrifugal force and blade tip runout under high-speed rotation—an area where it has accumulated over 40 years of experience.
What is even more impressive is that in the technology of high-speed rotating grinding of blade tips for aero-engines, it almost monopolizes the market share and is the only system in this niche segment approved by OEMs.
This determines that although this technology is applied in an extremely niche segment, catching up is by no means easy. Currently, only Kede Numerical Control has a benchmarking product in China, the high-speed blade tip grinding center KBTG1000, which is catching up with Danobat's DANTIP-R3 in parameters such as grinding length, workpiece length, spindle speed, and grinding wheel head swivel range.
The machine tool industry chain is rich, and there are too many choke point situations like the aforementioned technology. So, which domestic enterprises are tackling these issues, and what is their progress? We have conducted a review. (Due to limited space, if you need to check details such as the difficulty of breaking through the choke points and risk descriptions, you can join the Knowledge Planet to view the complete Excel file.)