VDW ups its forecast for 2007 again

Frankfurt am Main, 13 August 2007. – Following a strong first half of the year for the German machine tool manufacturing sector, the VDW (German Machine Tool Builders’ Association) has upped its production forecast for the second time this year. “We now anticipate a 15-per-cent rise in production output for 2007”, reports Helmut von Monschaw, the VDW’s Executive Director. “The continuingly healthy uptrend in machine tool orders during the first and second quarters of this year, together with an estimated growth in production output of at least 15 per cent in the year’s first six months justify this optimistic prediction”, he adds.

During the first half of 2007, order bookings in Germany’s machine tool manufacturing segment rose by a total of 40 per cent. Domestic orders were up by 31 per cent; demand from abroad soared by 45 per cent, with particularly major contributions coming from countries outside the Eurozone. Order bookings from Japan, Russia and India, for example, showed more than overproportional growth. The boom in demand is being fuelled from a broadly diversified customer base.

The firms are producing flat out. Capacity utilisation was up again, from 92.6 in March to 94.5 per cent in June. The order backlog, by contrast, remained steady during the same period, at 7.3 months. “This shows that German manufacturers can cope even at peak order levels”, explains von Monschaw, who attributed their enhanced performance to the significant optimisation already achieved in the production sequences involved.   

The German machine tool industry is one of the five largest trade branches in the mechanical engineering sector. It supplies all branches of industry with its products, making a significant contribution to advances in production within industry. Given its key position in industrial production, its own development is an important indicator for the economic dynamics of industry in general. Last year, the German machine tool industry produced machines and services to a total value of 10.8 billion euros.