FONKIN: AI Powers 2025 China Bearing Industry – R&D/Production Upgrade & High-end Leap

I）Overall Industry Overview

In 2025, driven by China's 14th Five-Year Plan and the global intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry, the bearing industry has taken "high-endization, intelligence, and greenization" as its main development direction, achieving dual leaps in scale and quality. As a core basic component of the equipment manufacturing industry, the independent controllability of the bearing industry has been continuously enhanced. It has not only achieved key breakthroughs in the domestic high-end equipment field but also significantly improved its competitiveness in the international market, showing an overall development trend of "stable quantity, improved quality, and strong exports".

（II）Major News Events

1.  High-end bearing exports surged year-on-year, with monthly growth rate hitting a new high in March: In the first quarter of 2025, China's bearing export volume increased by 8.7% year-on-year, among which the export volume in March reached 68,366 tons, a year-on-year surge of 25.3%, indicating a significant improvement in the international recognition of domestic bearings. 2.  Achievements of the National Super Large Bearing Innovation Alliance landed, breaking international monopoly: The innovation alliance led by Wazhou Group successfully mass-produced the world's first 4,000-ton all-terrain crane slewing bearing, breaking the long-term technical monopoly of German and Japanese enterprises. The related products have been supplied in batches to leading domestic and foreign enterprises. 3. Intelligent transformation of county-level bearing industry achieved remarkable results: Guantao, Hebei built the country's first bearing shared testing center, solving the quality inspection problems of small and micro enterprises through AI visual inspection technology, and promoting a significant improvement in the qualified rate of the local micro-bearing industry. 4.  The industry standard system was continuously improved: China Bearing Industry Association successfully held the 2025 Industry Summit Forum, released a number of group standards for high-end bearings, and promoted the standardized development of the industry.

（III）Major Achievements

1.  Independent controllability of bearings supporting high-end equipment: In the aerospace field, the three-point contact ball bearings developed by Sinomach Precision Engineering Institute have been successfully matched with the Long March 2F Yao-20 carrier rocket, with performance reaching the international advanced level; in the astronomical observation field, the feed cabin bearings developed by Luoyang Bearing Group have helped the Xinjiang Qitai Radio Telescope operate smoothly, setting a world record for precision. 2.  Breaking key technologies in new energy and heavy machinery fields: Luoyang Bearing Group developed the first domestic set of toothless cylindrical roller slewing bearings, Wazhou Group's 4,000-ton slewing bearings were mass-produced, and the 17MW wind power main shaft bearings developed by Luoyang Bearing Research Institute helped the world's largest single-unit power wind turbine roll off the production line, marking China's leap from catching up to leading in the field of ultra-large bearings. 3.  Continuous improvement of the technological innovation system: The R&D investment intensity of leading enterprises in the industry continued to increase. Luoyang Bearing Group has achieved 13 scientific and technological achievements reaching the international level during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. The domestic market share of wind power main bearings exceeds 40%, and the series of main bearings for shield machines have completely broken the dependence on imports.

（IV）Core Sales Data

According to statistics from the China Bearing Industry Association, in the first half of 2025, the bearing industry completed a total industrial output value (current price) of 53.802 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.04%; the industrial sales output value was 53.449 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.25%; the industrial added value was 16.094 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.37%. Looking forward to the whole year, the industry's revenue is expected to exceed 250 billion yuan, an increase of more than 8% compared with 231.5 billion yuan in 2024. In terms of exports, in addition to the outstanding performance in the first quarter, the export volume of bearings increased by 2% year-on-year in the first half of the year, among which the proportion of high-end bearing exports increased to 18%, an increase of 5 percentage points over the previous year. In the segmented market, the scale of the wind power bearing market is expected to reach 12 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.2%; the robot joint bearing has the fastest growth rate, expected to increase by 18.7% year-on-year.

（V）In-depth Application of AI in the Bearing Industry

In 2025, AI technology has fully penetrated the entire chain of R&D, production, quality inspection, and operation and maintenance of the bearing industry, becoming the core driving force for promoting the intelligent transformation of the industry. In the field of quality inspection, the AI visual inspection system has completely changed the traditional inspection mode: the AI visual system equipped in the Shanghai Bearing Shared Testing Center in Hebei automatically grabs bearings through a robotic arm for 360-degree rotation shooting, completes image analysis in milliseconds, accurately distinguishes oil stain reflection from real defects, and the inspection efficiency is increased to more than 60 pieces per minute, which is 10 times that of manual inspection. The misjudgment rate is reduced to less than 0.1%, and the cost per inspection is only a few cents, which greatly reduces the threshold for small and micro enterprises to apply technology. In the production of micro-precision bearings, the AI roundness inspection system can identify deviations at the 0.5-micron level. Combined with the life prediction algorithm platform, it can accurately simulate the wear law under different working conditions, with the prediction error controlled within 3%, promoting the proportion of high-end market orders of enterprises to increase by 40%.

In the field of production optimization and operation and maintenance, AI technology has realized the transformation from "post-remediation" to "pre-prediction". Leading enterprises in the industry have deployed AI-driven predictive maintenance systems to real-time monitor bearing vibration, temperature, lubrication status and other data, which can early warn faults such as raceway spalling and fatigue, extending the life of wind power bearings by 60%, reducing catastrophic bearing failures in the heavy industry field by 90%, and reducing downtime by 85%. Through the application of "5G + Industrial Internet of Things + AI" technology, Luoyang Bearing Group has realized the full-process digitalization of products from design, material selection to delivery. Its independently developed AI production optimization software accurately adjusts grinding process parameters by analyzing massive production data, increasing the product qualification rate from 60% to 92%. In addition, the application of AI in the R&D link has accelerated product iteration. By simulating the performance of different material formulas and structural designs, the R&D cycle of high-end bearings has been shortened by more than 30%.

（VI）FONKIN's Industry Practice and Contribution

As an active participant in the intelligent transformation of the industry, FONKIN's layout in the bearing field in 2025 focuses on AI technology integration and high-end product R&D. Relying on the industry's shared technology platform, FONKIN has established in-depth cooperation with the Shanghai Bearing Shared Testing Center in Hebei, integrating independently developed AI defect recognition algorithms into the testing system, optimizing algorithms for 8 typical defects such as surface scratches and pits of micro-bearings, further improving detection accuracy, reducing the system misjudgment rate to below 0.08%, and providing more efficient quality inspection solutions for regional small and micro enterprises. On the production side, the intelligent production line built by FONKIN has introduced an AI predictive maintenance system to real-time monitor the operation status of equipment bearings, optimize the lubrication strategy in combination with the characteristics of its own bearing products, reducing the equipment failure rate of the production line by 40% and improving production efficiency by 15%.

At the product level, focusing on the needs of the new energy vehicle and industrial robot fields, FONKIN has launched intelligent bearing products equipped with AI monitoring modules, which can real-time feed back operating temperature, vibration and other data, helping downstream enterprises realize equipment health management. In 2025, the sales volume of this series of intelligent bearings increased by 52% year-on-year, among which the special bearings for robot joints successfully entered the Southeast Asian market, becoming one of the core driving forces for the company's export growth, and also confirming the competitiveness of domestic intelligent bearings in the international market.

（VII）Industry Outlook

Looking forward to the future, China's bearing industry will continue to move towards high-endization and intelligence. With the increase in the penetration rate of AI technology (it is expected that the penetration rate of intelligent production lines will reach 60% in 2025), the industry's production efficiency and product quality will be further improved. At the policy level, the support for high-end bearing materials in the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of New Material Industry will accelerate the process of import substitution. According to the prediction of Zhongyan Puhua, by 2030, the output value of China's bearing entire industrial chain will exceed 500 billion yuan, the proportion of high-end bearings will increase to 40%, and the penetration rate of intelligent bearings will exceed 30%. However, the industry still needs to overcome key problems in basic processes such as precision heat treatment and strengthen industry-university-research collaborative innovation to achieve the leap from a "big bearing country" to a "strong bearing country".