German manufacturers of plastics and rubber machinery managed after all to end last year with a small increase in sales of 1%. The production value in core machinery thus remained at its record value of around EUR 6.8 bn. These provisional figures were reported by the German association for plastics and rubber machinery VDMA Kunststoff- und Gummimaschinen (KuG, Frankfurt; http://kug.vdma.org). "Last year’s result is more or less in line with our forecast," said KuG chairman Ulrich Reifenhäuser. "In autumn, we predicted sales of just below the 2013 level," he added (see Plasteurope.com of 17.10.2014).

Also, the overall number of incoming orders is around 3% above the previous year’s level. A particularly pleasing aspect is that, with a 17% increase in the number of orders, the domestic market has balanced out the demand backlog that many players have been complaining about in recent years, reports KuG managing director Thorsten Kühmann. "As far as foreign demand is concerned, the positive development of the euro currency countries continued, adding 15%. Overall, export orders were down 1% compared with the previous year," said Kühmann.

In addition, deliveries abroad up to November 2014 were just under 1% below the figure for the previous year. The minus rate did, however, improve during the course of the year. In terms of the customer countries, China and the US remained stable as the numbers one and two last year, but Poland advanced to third place among the top ten buyers.

As regards the outlook for 2015, the trend survey carried out every six months among the association members was definitely optimistic at the beginning of the year. The expectations for the current half-year are positive for all regions with the exception of eastern Europe. For Latin America and China, growth is expected again. “We forecast a sales increase of 4% for the year as a whole, which would take the sales volume for the first time above the EUR 7 bn threshold,” said Reifenhäuser optimistically.