After winning a 94.55% stake in KUKA Group, Germany's largest industrial robot manufacturer, and after a year of integration, the U.S. group teamed up with KUKA to begin a new round of moves in the robotics field.
On March 22nd, Midea and KUKA announced that Midea will inject capital into the subsidiary operations of KUKA China and establish three joint ventures. After the establishment of the new company, the two parties will each own 50% of the joint venture company.
On the same day, Midea Group announced that the KUKA Board of Supervisors approved the merger of its general industrial business in China with the company's China business, and established a joint venture with Midea to undertake the above business.
The U.S. side stated that the goal of establishing a joint venture company is to expand the business of industrial robots, medical care, and warehouse automation. It will respond to the rapid development of the Chinese market in smart manufacturing, smart medical and smart logistics, and new retail sales. Products and solutions that are suitable for Chinese customers' needs, realize the full-scale and high-speed growth of automation business.
Industry insiders believe that this is the first time the United States has announced its development plan in the field of robotics after the acquisition of KUKA. It can be seen that the U.S. KUKA joint planning and layout of the robotics business sector. The establishment of a joint venture company with KUKA, the United States is also a new Exploration of business model.
First robot planning
The layout is clear
The rapid outbreak of the global robot market has allowed Midea to speed up its layout in this area.
With the advent of China's 2025 strategy and consumer upgrades, the demand for robots has soared. The data released by the International Federation of Robotics shows that China has become a world leader in industrial automation at a record pace. Currently, The annual sales of Chinese industrial robots have reached the highest level in all countries since records: In 2016, sales reached 87,000 units, and the annual growth rate was 27%. From 2018 to 2020, the sales of Chinese industrial robots Will increase by 15% to 20%.
In response, Til Laughte, CEO of KUKA Global, stated: 'The joint venture company has made our development plan in China more specific and specific, and it has also provided a strong guarantee for the success of Kuka in the world. The strong alliance between Kuka and the United States, This kind of cooperation has taken us one step further from becoming the first goal of China.'
It is reported that after the joint venture company lands, Midea will integrate the business of KUKA's subsidiary SHIGEG in mainland China into the joint venture company. The US side stated that this is to comply with China's rapid development in the medical and warehousing retail industry. , To further develop products and solutions that meet the needs of Chinese customers, and realize the full-scale and high-speed growth of these two businesses.
At the same time, Midea China's Shunde Science and Technology Park will establish a new production base for new product development. The United States plans to reach a capacity of 75,000 robots per year by 2024. Together with the existing production capacity, the total annual robot production capacity in China will reach 100,000 units.
In fact, the U.S. acquisition of KUKA has not been smooth sailing. It can be said that there are many twists and turns and the acquisition process is relatively slow.
Earlier, when interviewed by the "Securities Daily" reporter, the relevant person in charge of the United States stated: 'The U.S. has spent nearly a year integrating Kuka. Although U.S. has an equity relationship with Kuka, both parties have their own set of standards. , US and KUKA remain relatively independent, both respect each other.
Fang Hongbo, Chairman of Midea Group, said, 'By joining hands with KUKA to establish a joint venture company, we deeply integrated the advantageous resources of both parties to realize closed-loop integration of the US version of the industrial Internet; externally, we continued to deepen our efforts in the industrial and consumer robot market. Broad demand, from a higher perspective to promote the 'new generation of man-machine in the evolution of the Chinese market'.
Industrial Economic Observer Hong Shibin said: 'The cooperation between U.S. and KUKA is the further landing of business and business models after the completion of the integration. The two parties will establish a production base. The KUKA will provide technical support for U.S. and U.S. will further Promoting the expansion of the KUKA business in the Chinese market. Although the United States is a KUKA shareholder, but both are different business entities, each has a division of labor. The two parties are currently trying to explore the business model through the joint venture model. If this Successful model, the two sides may establish more joint venture companies in the future.
Internal integration and digestion
Big Technology Group Ambition Exposure
In the past two years, Midea's actions in the international market have been frequent, aiming at industrial robots.
The most recent large-scale acquisition of Midea was in 2016. In the first half of 2016 alone, Fang Hongbo, who has been in charge of the US group’s Shuai India for just four years, dominated three cross-border acquisitions within six months. Among them, the The acquisition of the most ups and downs, and the longest time-consuming.
After three months of acquisition, Midea finally won the KUKA. Eventually, Midea owns 37.6 million shares of KUKA through overseas wholly-owned subsidiaries, accounting for approximately 94.55% of the KUKA Group's issued share capital.
Behind this series of actions is the ambition of Midea to transform itself into a big technology group. Last year, following the completion of several cross-border mergers and acquisitions, Midea announced a new transformation direction - becoming a 'global leader in consumer electronics'. Air conditioning, robotics and industrial automation systems technology groups'.
Zhang Xiaoyi, CIO of the Midea Group, revealed that the existing cloud platform solution of Midea Group has been able to support the production and operation of more than 10,000 products at more than 40 bases around the world, providing flexible solutions for multi-layer processing and complex machining.