Karl has been involved in the business to business information service since 1990. Having spent time with information to the construction and manufacturing industry in the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany and the US.
- The Index is split into three processes - Machining, Fabrication, and Others.
- 2024’s data for Quarter 2 is collected from 180 companies and 299 projects.
- Quarter 2's Index dropped by 28% against the preceding quarter.
After a very active 1st quarter, the 2nd quarter has been slower with less activity by buyers. We are again hearing that projects are been on hold and particular in the last few weeks, all waiting for the UK election.
Suppliers became very active quoting and winning many projects during June and we hope new project will be released as soon as the election is over.
Machining
- 53% of second quarter projects were from machining processes.
- The buyers of machining processes has a total outsourcing value of £13,216,620 which about average for the year.
he index is for machining is down 20% from previous quarter and down 22% on previous year
Fabrication
- 37% of second quarter projects were from fabrication process
- The buyers of fabrication processes has a total outsourcing value of £9,536,717 which is lower then the average for last year.
- The index for Fabrication is down 43% on last quarter and 27% down on last years figures.
Not a good result for fabrication this quarter, the only positive is that the share of the total projects were up from last quarter and the overall trend for the last 12 months is slightly upwards.
Others
- 10% of second quarter projects were from other processes
- The buyers of other processes has a total outsourcing value of £2,448,867 which a lot higher than last quarter.
- The index for Others is up 80% on last quarter and 20% down on last year
a very good quarter for others which is up 80% on last quarter which has changed the overall trend to be upwards.
Industry
Industrial Machinery is on top again followed by Marine industry and Food & Beverage.
Industrial Machine is 35% of the total which is slightly lower than last quarter. Marine was not even in the top 8 last quarter and Food & Beverage has jumped up one.
The Companies outsourcing Industrial Machinery are middle size companies with about 70 employees and and average outsource value of £650,000.
Lead times
Lead times are creeping up again after a drop down to 19 days at the beginning of the year.
About Contract Manufacturing Index
The Contract Manufacturing Index (CMI) has been developed to reflect the total purchasing budget of companies that are looking to outsource subcontract manufacturing in any given month.
This reflects a sample of over 4,000 companies, who have a purchasing budget of more than £5bn and a supplier base sample of over 7,000 vendors, with a verified turnover in excess of £25bn.
We measure this by extracting data from the projects we receive from manufacturing purchasers who have an active need for the services of subcontract engineering suppliers.
Since 2016, we have published the index quarterly and this report is a summary of our findings for the this current quarter. In order to shed more light on the emerging trends, we have also broken this down by process and industry.