Construction equipment and building materials plant industry in difficult waters

• The industry is currently facing numerous crises
• Supply chain problems have intensified
• No turnover growth this year despite good order situation

Frankfurt am Main, 29 July 2022 – As recently as February, incoming orders in the construction machinery industry had manufacturers with production facilities in Germany looking ahead to 2022 with the hope that single-digit sales growth of 7 percent could be achieved if the situation on the supplier side improved. This expectation has lapsed; the industry sees itself unable to make a serious forecast in a current crisis environment of war, inflation, energy shortages, the onset of the interest rate turnaround, the weakness of the euro, the continuing negative effects of the pandemic, especially in China, and huge disruptions in international logistics.

The situation is paradoxical. The high order backlog in the construction machinery industry as well as in the building material plant industry belies the situation. Despite this good situation, some companies are on short-time work because of a lack of material and preliminary products. Whether they will be able to work off the orders in the coming months is completely unclear. Additional demand stimuli are hardly in sight so far. Therefore, flexible framework conditions are imperative to be able to manoeuvre through these uncertain waters.

In the medium term, the outlook remains positive because most customer industries will continue to grow in the future. However, there will be a slowing effect due to the increased public debt in many countries as a result of the pandemic and the Ukraine war.

bauma and glasstec in autumn provide impetus

The major tasks of reducing CO2 and advancing digitalisation are boosting the innovative strength of companies and thus opening up expanded or new fields of business. The leading trade fairs for the construction machinery and building materials plant industry, glasstec in September and bauma in October, will point the way ahead.

Source:  VDMA Construction – Equipment and Plant Engineering Press