On June 5, 2026, the General Administration of Customs issued Announcement No. 77 of 2026. Starting from June 30, the export rules for lathes, milling machines, grinders and other machine tool equipment will undergo major changes.
Gone are the past situations where you could simply fill in “CNC processing equipment” on the customs declaration form and get through. Now export companies need to specify the parameters of each machine in detail, including the number of axes, the number of linkage axes, processing materials, accuracy, and the final use factory and production line.
The implementation of this rule is not to put a sudden brake on foreign trade, but to put a safety belt on the entire export chain and make exports more standardized and orderly.
The Indian market quickly became the focus after the release of this new regulation.
In recent years, Indian companies have become more enthusiastic about purchasing Chinese machine tools, especially automobile factories, motorcycle factories and infrastructure machinery factories, and their orders for mid-range CNC lathes have increased significantly.
A three-axis lathe can be used for both engine crankshaft and brake disc grinding.
Although local Indian companies can produce similar equipment, they have deficiencies in stability and accuracy, resulting in a low yield rate.
The price of similar equipment made in China may be only 60% of that of German products, and the delivery cycle is half as short. Moreover, after-sales engineers can fly to India to debug parameters on-site, which makes Chinese machine tools extremely competitive in the Indian market.
The export of Chinese machine tools to India is not only the sale of equipment, but also a series of related businesses such as cutting tools, fixtures, system upgrade packages, PLC programming services and three-year on-site maintenance contracts.
After using Chinese equipment for two years, some small parts factories in India only recognize the Chinese brand number even when changing blades.
This means that Chinese machine tools have been deeply integrated into India’s production supply chain, quietly screwing India’s production rhythm into the screw mouth of China’s supply chain.
It should be pointed out that high-end machines such as five-axis linkage that can process J-20 blades have long been on the dual-use list.
This new regulation only makes exit management more transparent and clear. It is not a lock, but a replacement of access control with facial recognition.
For ordinary factories purchasing two-axis CNC lathes, as long as the form is filled out in compliance and the purpose is transparent, they can still be shipped as usual.
However, if the purchaser is vague, the end user information is unclear, the address is unknown, the industry is not standardized, and the purchase volume far exceeds the production capacity, then the order needs further review.
In 2025, China’s machine tool exports will already occupy the forefront of the world. This is accumulated by Chinese machine tool companies through the production of equipment, the signing of single contracts, and high-quality after-sales services.
The Indian market is crucial to many small and medium-sized machine tool factories. It is an important support for maintaining production capacity, collecting cash flow, and cultivating R&D teams.
If a one-size-fits-all approach is taken to stop selling machine tools to India, manufacturers in Germany, Japan and Taiwan will inevitably take the opportunity to seize the market.
After the new regulations are officially implemented on June 30, all export companies need to be more cautious when making customs declarations and ask themselves a few more questions: Who is this lathe going to be sold to?
Where to install it?
What kind of work do you do?
Only by calculating these accounts clearly can the road to export become wider and wider.
