European plastic and rubber machine industry output up by 6.4%

20-Nov-07

The European plastic and rubber machinery industry represented by EUROMAP generated a turnover of €15.7 bln in 2006. The industry's output, made up for the previous year's decline, with output that was up by 6.4% overall. Exports increased, attaining a growth of 9.2% and at the same time, the export ratio rose to 68.2%. Sales continued to improve in H1-07. From January to June, incoming orders improved as compared to the previous 6 months. This was largely due to the growth in demand on the various domestic markets in Western Europe, where orders turned out to be appreciably better than expected at the start of the year. Most plastic and rubber machinery manufacturers in the EUROMAP area do not expect demand to change significantly in the second half of the year. Given the present high level, only a few of the survey respondents thought there would be further improvements. No significant changes in orders booked are anticipated for the first half of 2008 either. Only very few factory output constraints are at present due to a lack of orders. However, a growing number of firms are complaining of other factors that are greatly hampering business activity, such as problems with supplies of all kinds of components, extremely long delivery times, sharp rises in prices of raw materials, supplies and components and, finally, also difficulties in finding skilled labour. More than half of the survey respondents among European plastic and rubber machinery manufacturers took on additional staff in the first half of 2007, while only a few firms saw redundancies. Further recruitment is also planned for the current half year. The European plastic and rubber machinery industry represented by EUROMAP comprises more than 3,400 manufacturers of core machinery and of moulds and dies, peripheral equipment and flexo printing machines for plastic film. These companies employ around 91,000 people and generated turnover of 15.7 billion euro in 2006.