Asia growth for German machinery sales in 2009

China is the main export market for German plastics and rubber machinery, with sales there accounting for a 13.5% share of all exports at €357m. The next three largest destinations were USA (€258m), Russia (€136m) and India (€131m). There were lower sales of German plastics and rubber machinery in all of the top ten export markets in 2009, except for India with 29,8% growth, bringing the country up from twelfth position in 2008 to fourth position in 2009.

Asia, with 36.5%, has replaced the EU as the main export region in 2009. The EU has 29.6% of this market, while non-EU countries account for 12.2%, North America 10.7%, Latin America 7.2%, Africa 2.6% and Australia/Oceania 1.2%.

Although China has therefore overtaken Germany for the first time to take the leading position in market value, Germany is still the leading exporting country with a 24.4% share of €10.8bn exports. China takes just 9% - showing the importance of the Chinese domestic market for Chinese producers.

In terms of exports, there was an overall 33.9% decline for all types of core plastics and rubber machinery to €2.6bn. Injection moulding machinery suffered a 43.3% decline to €382m and extrusion machinery exports fell 31.5% to €446m,

Production value of German core plastics and rubber machinery declined by 31.3% in 2009 to €3.8bn, injection moulding machinery suffering a 52.2% decline to €406m, while the production value of extrusion machinery declined 28.8% to €696m.

VDMA president Ulrich Reifenhäuser says incoming orders grew 35% in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Reifenhäuser referred to positive growth indicators from end-user markets, which should finally feed through to plastics machinery demand.

A forecast prepared for VDMA suggests that turnover should increase by a good 11% in 2010 and almost 11% in 2011. Ulrich Reifenhäuser said: “After the collapse of 30% last year, we see this positive forecast as a great relief. Despite this it must be clear to all of us that even after growth of 11% we will still lie around 25% below the record year of 2008”.

But VDMA managing director Thorsten Kühmann retained some caution, warning of risks from the susceptibility of financial markets to periods of crisis and from overheating in emerging market economies, especially in China and India.

According to Kühmann, there is a risk the upswing will cool off because of increasing oil, energy and raw material prices. It is also unclear how much of the present growth can be accounted for by various national short-term economic stimulation programmes, he adds.

The VDMA German plastics and rubber machinery producers association announced the industry’s 2009 results at its annual conference in Mainz on 27 May.