Orders received by the German machine tool industry in the second quarter of 2019 were 22 per cent down on the same period last year with orders from Germany falling by 28%.
Orders from outside Germany fell by 18% year on year. Orders received fell by 21 per cent in the first half of 2019. Domestic sales were down 19 per cent in this period, with foreign sales 23 per cent lower.
"In the second quarter, orders are once again more than twenty per cent down on last year's strong figures. The base effect can no longer disguise the global decline in investment in mechanical and plant engineering,” said Dr. Wilfried Schäfer, Executive Director of VDW, the German Machine Tool Builders' Association.
"We are in the same boat as the other major international suppliers. Orders for machine tools have collapsed worldwide. Many countries are now having to pay the price for the almost daily international disputes being picked by politicians," says Schäfer.
The VDW says that the machine tool sector is a pure supplier of capital goods and equipment to industry, and as such is exposed to pressure from weak demand in the major customer industries, the engineering sector and the automotive industry. The latter is additionally undergoing a protracted period of uncertainty as a result of the tentative transformation process towards new drive technologies and is cutting back investment accordingly.