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Production and sales of German machinery industry in Dec. 2023

Production of German machinery industry stagnating, sales peak since 2008

Symbol picture machinery industry.

This report combines multi-year trends with monthly status of production and sales in the German mechanical engineering. However, associations and official statistics separate both in favor of a mechanical comparison to previous month or year. Thus long-term effective trends are losing sight of. A separate trend report publishes the trends in production and sales from 2008 to 2022. As sales in euro are published delayed in time by the Federal Statistical Office publishes, so our analysis of these numbers.

Update February 9th, 2024 – After overcoming the trough of the global economic crisis by mid-2012, the production trend in the German mechanical engineering industry (dotted line) formed a six-year growth phase, at times interrupted by stagnation and decline. During this period, production grew at a trend rate of 0.8% per year.


This slight growth trend ended in October 2018 with 107.1 index points, the highest value since the global economic crisis of 2008. 


From October to February 2021 the trend of production went down to 89 Indexpoints. From March 2021 to February 2022 the trend in production pointed again to the upside, however, has been stalling since March 2022.


However, the downtrend from October 2018 to December 2023 is still prevailing with a decline of 2.1% p.a.


The trend is defined by Quest Trend Magazine as moving yearly average of the production and sales indexes published by the Federal Statistical Office.

Production machinery industry in Germany from 2008 to 2023.

Taking into account the entire period after overcoming the crisis low in mid-2012 until December 2023, the production trend shows a decrease of 0.4% per year.

Since May 2019 trend of sales altogether on new highs since 2008

After overcoming the crisis low in mid-2012, sales also formed a growth trend that essentially continued until May 2019 at a growth rate of 2.2% p.a. and, at 111.6 index points, reached at first the highest level since the economic crisis of 2008/09.


From May 2019 to February 2021, sales slumped by 9.5% p.a. Since March 2021 the trend reversed upward at a yearly growth rate of 10.0% to a new high of 123.5 index points since 2008.

Sales of German machinery industry from 2008 to 2023.

Looking at the entire period since the crisis bottom was overcome in mid-2012 until DecemberJuly 2023, the trend points to a slight growth of 2.2% p.a.

Sales trend in euro of machinery industry on new high of €22.6bn

In May 2019, the sales trend in euros intially reached a new record level of €20.9 billion since the outbreak of the global economic crisis.


The change to the downward trend pushed sales down to € 17.8 billion in February 2021, a decline by 8.6% p.a. since May 2019.


Since March 2021 sales trend in euro climbed to new highs, last reaching € 22.6 billion in December 2023.


The slight growth trend of sales from 2012 to 2018 was combined with distinct fluctuations around a slow increasing growth line in the course of several years. This phenomenon is visualized by an extra report for the time since 2000. Fluctuations of sales becoming ever larger.

Sales of machinery industry in euro in Germany from 2008 to 2023.

The export markets in the long-term analysis

The export markets of the German machinery industry, the concentration of the export markets as well as the declining absorbing power of most of the export markets for German machine exports highlights several reports with long-term analyses.

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