The ongoing difficult economic, domestic political and geopolitical conditions are having an increasingly noticeable impact on mechanical engineering companies in North Rhine-Westphalia. The German Engineering Federation (VDMA) is forecasting a decline in turnover of 4 percent for North Rhine-Westphalia in 2024.
This forecast reflects the negative trend in demand last year. In the first eleven months of 2023, orders from Germany and abroad remained significantly below the previous year's figures, falling by 15 percent.
“The global economic downturn is having an ever greater impact on the mechanical and plant engineering sector in North Rhine-Westphalia”, explains Dr Timo Berger, Chairman of the Executive Board of VDMA NRW. He emphasises that companies need investment-friendly, competitive and sustainable framework conditions: “Companies must be able to have confidence in political decisions - only then will the foundation be laid for successful long-term investments, which we need for the important transformation processes and a successful North Rhine-Westphalia location.”
The VDMA represents 3,600 German and European companies in the mechanical and plant engineering sector. The industry stands for innovation, export-orientation and medium-sized companies. The companies employ a total of around 3 million people in the EU-27, more than 1.2 million of them in Germany alone. This makes mechanical and plant engineering the largest employer among the capital goods industries, both in the EU-27 and in Germany. It represents an estimated sales volume of around 860 billion euros in the European Union. Around 80 percent of the machines sold in the EU come from a production facility in the internal market.
