An advanced computer numerical control (CNC) machine tool was shipped to Germany from northeast China's port city of Dalian on Wednesday in the country's first export of cutting-edge equipment to a developed economy.

The high-speed five-axis vertical machining center, which consists of a numerical control system, a servo drive and an electric motor manufactured by Dalian Kede Numerical Control Co. Ltd, will be transported to Knuth Werkzeugmaschinen Gmbh, a leading global machine tools supplier based in Germany.

Wang Weiming, deputy director of the equipment department with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, hailed the shipment as "an important milestone for the Chinese machine tools manufacturing industry."

Wang's remarks came at a shipment ceremony at the company's 15,000-square-meter underground manufacturing workshop, the largest of its kind in the world.

"We broke the technology monopoly of Western countries and processing efficiency has at least doubled from similar imported machine tools," said Yang Jiping, a researcher with the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp.

The company used to rely on imported machine tools to manufacture core components of space equipment for China's space mission.

The technological performance and processing efficiency of the CNC machine tool shipped on Wednesday is world-class, while the price is much lower than similar products in the West, according to Yu Dehai, chairman of Dalian Guangyang Science and Technology Engineering Co. Ltd, the parent company of Dalian Kede Numerical Control Co. Ltd. A Japanese company also ordered three such machine tools, Yu added.