GERMANY – The German  mechanical eningeering industry had an extraordinarily strong recovery last year. While the first coronavirus pandemic year 2020 was  characterised by significant declines in orders, the order books were filled again strongly in 2021.

Overall, German machinery and plant manufacturing companies recorded a real order growth of 32 percent compared to the previous year, with domestic orders increasing by 18 percent and foreign orders by 39 percent. Adjusted for prices, incoming orders even exceeded the high level of the economically good year 2018 by 7 per cent.

“As a result, companies have started the current year with an above-average order backlog of 10,9 months. This provides security, even if the existing supply bottlenecks will continue for quite some time and make it difficult to process the orders,” summarised VDMA (Mechanical Engineering Industry Association) economic expert Olaf Wortmann.

For the fourth quarter of 2021 as a whole, orders increased by 21 percent, compared to the previous year. Domestic orders increased by 14 per cent, while orders from abroad rose by 24 per cent. The euro zone countries increased their orders by 28 per cent in this period, the non-euro countries by 23 per cent.