Yes, it requires production of mining hardware, but just for adding new hashing capacity to the network. Major part of the mining cost comes from energy, and I believe that in the long run even more so. Energy efficiency of mining hardware has pretty much plateaued, and modern hardware should be good for 10 years of mining, which means that less hardware has to be replaced.

The competition has shifted into finding cheaper energy sources, rather than developing more energy efficient ASICs. There's a clear trend in this direction.