Thanks to well-filled order books, German machine tool manufacturers are optimistic about the current year. “The machine tool industry has a good chance of a successful year 2022,” said Franz-Xaver Bernhard, Chairman of the Association of German Machine Tool Factories (VDW). Since last year, a strong upswing has been recorded. For the current year, a production increase of 14 percent was predicted.
The machine tool industry is one of the five largest branches of german mechanical engineering. Mechanical engineering as a whole recently expected a price-adjusted (real) increase in production of 7 percent in the current year.
“Excellent demand development”
“The optimism for 2022 is based on the excellent development of demand since the middle of last year,” explained Bernhard. Order intake in 2021 rose by 58 percent compared to the previous year and was 11 percent above the level of the pre-Corona year 2019.However, machine tool manufacturers are concerned about supply bottlenecks and the shortage of skilled workers.
“Bottlenecks in the supply chains of electronic components and metal products have been the dominant theme for the industry over the past year and they continue,” Bernhard said. According to a survey, the supply bottlenecks reached almost all machine tool manufacturers at the end of 2021. (dpa-AFX/gem)
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