“Orders received by the German machine tool industry have therefore been stronger than expected,” said Dr. Wilfried Schäfer, Executive Director of the VDW (German Machine Tool Builders’ Association) in Frankfurt am Main, commenting on the result.
International demand remains consistently high. The euro countries represent a reliable market. There was a disproportionately high increase of 23 percent in orders for machine tools from there in the first quarter in comparison to the same period last year. “Furthermore, the increase in demand from the key Chinese market is now broader based,” reported Schäfer. Orders rose last year by more than twenty percent, primarily due to large international automotive industry projects in China. The strong development has continued, however, in the first quarter of 2017.
There was a 13 percent increase in metal forming technology orders. This rise in demand came both from home and abroad. Machining equipment orders, however, which represent about 70 percent of the total, only rose by 3 percent. The main source of growth here was foreign markets, which posted an increase of 6 percent. Domestic demand, by contrast, fell by 4 percent.
“The German machine tool industry continues to perform stably and at a high level, undeterred by the many crises and uncertainties affecting different parts of the world,” said VDW Executive Director Schäfer.
Order intake of the German Machine Tools Industry
