The first sentence of Germany's National Water Strategy, adopted by cabinet resolution in March 2023, emphasises: “Water is the basis of all life.” This strategy should not be viewed in isolation, but in a European and global context: considerable investment in water management is required to overcome current and future challenges.
These investments absolutely include state-of-the-art technologies. Technologies provided by the mechanical and plant engineering industry. On today's World Water Day, the VDMA (German Engineering Federation) is taking stock. The result: Innovative and efficient water and wastewater technology from Germany will be in high demand worldwide in 2023.
The record level of exports exceeds the results from the previous year. Despite the many political and economic uncertainties that manufacturers of water and wastewater technology from Germany were confronted with. Compared to 2022, exports increased by 5.5 percent to almost 1.3 billion euros.
Water and wastewater technology: offsetting declines
Regarding the development of individual sales regions, a look at the statistics does not provide a uniform picture. The export volume of domestic manufacturers to the EU states, still by far the most important sales region, rose slightly below average by 2.6 percent to EUR 611 million. This means that 47 percent of all exports of water and wastewater technology from Germany were exported to other EU countries.
A positive rate of change was also recorded for the equally important customer regions of Other Europe (up 6.5 percent) and North America (up 7.9 percent). East Asia recorded a negative development of minus 4.7 percent. The comparatively smaller sales regions of North Africa (up 55.2 percent), Southeast Asia (up 54.7 percent) and Central and South Asia (up 50.1 percent) saw the most significant positive changes. The sharpest decline was recorded in the Near/Middle East (down 5.5 percent).
German suppliers of water and wastewater technology were thus able to compensate for significant declines in exports to one important region with equally significant growth in other sales regions.
Of the ten most important individual markets for water and wastewater technology from Germany, exports to seven markets developed positively in 2023 and to three markets (in some cases only very slightly) negatively. These include China, which was still the most important market in 2020. China now only ranks eighth among the most important sales markets, ahead of Switzerland and Spain.
