The surprise arrest of Huawei Technologies Co.'s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou is about to impact one of the Chinese company's suppliers in Japan. Yaskawa Electric Corp., which supplies industrial robots for Huawei's smartphone and telecom gear factories, saw all orders for its machines put on hold after the arrest, President Hiroshi Ogasawara said in an interview Wednesday. Of Yaskawa's ¥448.5 billion revenue for the fiscal year that ended in February, 23 percent came from China. "My people on the ground in China say that Huawei is turned upside down internally," Ogasawara said. "All kinds of capex (capital expenditure) deals are temporarily on hold as they figure things out."

The surprise arrest of Huawei Technologies Co.'s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou is about to impact one of the Chinese company's suppliers in Japan. Yaskawa Electric Corp., which supplies industrial robots for Huawei's smartphone and telecom gear factories, saw all orders for its machines put on hold after the arrest, President Hiroshi Ogasawara said in an interview Wednesday. Of Yaskawa's ¥448.5 billion ($4 billion) in revenue for the fiscal year that ended in February, 23 percent came from China. "My people on the ground in China say that Huawei is turned upside down internally," Ogasawara said. "All kinds of capex deals are temporarily on hold as they figure things out."

Sales of industrial robots in China, the world's biggest market, will grow this year at only about a third the pace seen last year as an escalating Sino-U.S. trade war hits spending on equipment, a global robot group said on Thursday. In its annual report, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) forecast Chinese demand for robots will grow 15-20 percent this year after surging 59 percent to 137,920 units last year. With China accounting for 36 percent of the global robot market and with its sales volume exceeding the total of Europe and the Americas combined, slowing demand growth in the Asian nation is also impacting global demand. IFR, which brings together nearly 60 global robot suppliers and integrators, predicts worldwide industrial robot sales this year will grow 10 percent compared to last year's 30 percent. Because of the trade war, many global manufacturers "are now in a wait-and-see mode, wondering whether to shift production (away from China) to, let's say, Vietnam or the United States," IFR President Junji Tsuda said in an interview.

I've never been quite as fond of Japan's Fanuc (OTCPK:FANUY) (6954.T) as many readers seem to be, and over the last five years you could have done better with other automation names like Yaskawa (OTCPK:YASKY), Rockwell (ROK), Keyence (OTCPK:KYCCF), or HollySys (HOLI) (though the two-year comps are more forgiving to Fanuc). While Fanuc has done better than I'd expected over the last two years in terms of revenue growth, leveraging a strong rebound in machine tool and robomachinery orders, margins and FCF generation haven't been all that impressive as business has skewed to lower-margin products. Now there are macro clouds on the horizon. Weaker smartphone capex demands seem likely to pressure results in 2018 and we may be nearing the point of peak machine tool orders, setting the stage for what could be a nasty decline over the next few years. I do expect Fanuc to continue to see strong growth in robots and robotic components, but I'm just not excited about the valuation today given those challenges and potential risks.

LJUBLJANA – Electrical equipment-producer Yaskawa, which is building an industrial robot factory in Slovenia, has decided to build another factory in the country to produce electrical components. The new factory will make inverter drives, servo drives and servo motors, Yaskawa said Monday. "Expanding our production capacity will enable us to further improve the supply chain, shorten our lead times and enhance the service for our European customers," Manfred Stern, head of Yaskawa Europe, said in a statement. Yaskawa did not reveal the value of the new investment, but according to local media it will be worth some €25 million ($30 million) and will create up to 250 new jobs. The company already makes industrial robot parts in Slovenia.

A two-armed robot in a Chiba factory carefully stacks rice balls in a box, which a worker carries off for shipment to convenience stores. At another food-packaging plant, a robot shakes pepper and powdered cheese over pasta that a person has just arranged in a container. In a country known for bringing large-scale industrial robots to the factory floor, such relatively dainty machines have until recently been dismissed as niche and low-margin. But as the workforce ages in Japan and elsewhere, collaborative robots -- or "cobots" -- are seen as a key way to help keep all types of assembly lines moving without replacing humans. Japan's Fanuc Corp. and Yaskawa Electric Corp., two of the world's largest robot manufacturers, didn't see the shift coming.

When Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency in November with a promise to lure back manufacturing jobs, Sean Patton trimmed his sales projections for 2017. Patton is head of business development for Genesis-ICESA Systems, a family-run automation integrator based in Mexico's Bajío region. His company largely caters to the country's burgeoning automotive industry, a big exporter to the United States. Midway through 2017, however, it looks as if Mexico's automotive engine can't be stalled: the industry is anticipating its eighth consecutive year of record-high production and exports. And in a bid to stay competitive, the Mexican car industry is embracing ever more automation.