The EMO Hannover will be opening its doors from September 16 to 21, 2013. At the world’s premier trade fair for the metalworking sector, international manufacturers of production technology will be showcasing their products, solutions and services relating to metal as a material under the keynote theme of “Intelligence in Production.”



"EMO Hannover will once again be an event of superlatives for our sector,” affirmed Carl Martin Welcker, General Commissioner of the EMO Hannover 2013. “This is a highly impressive confirmation of the huge demand we are seeing from companies all over the world,” added Mr. Welcker. By the end of June, around 2,030 companies had registered. Exhibitors will be showing the international trade visitors how they can best meet and master the challenges they face in the production process.



Sixty percent of the exhibitors will come from 39 other countries outside of Germany. Reflecting its leading status in terms of technology, Europe, with more than 1,500 exhibitors, is the most heavily represented region. Around a fifth, more than 430 firms are arriving from Asia alone.



"For every machine tool manufacturer who wants to do business on the international scene, participating in the EMO Hannover is an absolute must,” adds Mr. Welcker.



International machine tool market still expands, customers’ investment continues. The machine tool industry market continues to develop. In the past 20 years up to 2012, international consumption of machine tools has tripled to more than 80 billion dollars. Since the turn of the millennium, it has increased by an annual average of almost 5 percent. This growth has been driven primarily by Asia, where in 2012 approximately 60 percent of total international machine tool production output was consumed.



For the EMO Hannover 2013, as the world’s premier trade fair for the metalworking sector, the international macro-economic environment plays an important role.



This year, economic pundits are predicting another rise in machine tool consumption of 2 percent to a record volume. This means that following three strong preceding years, we are seeing a temporary slowdown, resulting primarily from continuing loss of confidence in the prospects of the global economy. Economic pundits anticipate, however, that GDP and industrial production output will gain significantly in momentum during the second half of 2013. Machine tool consumption is set to grow by one-tenth in 2014.



This will benefit the biggest customer groupings of the world’s machine tool manufacturers: the automotive industry and its component suppliers, machinery manufacturers, metalworking companies, the electrical engineering industry, precision engineering and optics, including medical technology, plus other vehicle producers (aviation industry, rail vehicle manufacture and shipbuilding). They will be investing over 6 percent more in the current year, a figure that is set to double in 2014.



The success of the EMO Hannover, as the world’s premier trade fair for this sector, is significantly underpinned by the globalized nature of the machine tool business. More than half of global machine tool production output is internationally traded. The volume has risen by 80 percent since the turn of the millennium. This applies even more for Europe’s machine tool industry, which exports almost 85 percent of its production output. According to an analysis prepared by the European Association of the Machine Tool Industries (CECIMO), more than 80 percent of its exports involving metal-cutting machine tools feature NC technology. In the United States machine tool industry, the figure is 61 percent, while in China’s corresponding sector it is 44 percent.



Germany is a major player in international machine tool development. Germany, the host country of the EMO Hannover 2013, ranks among the major players on the international machine tool scene. Not only will the Germans, who will be providing the largest number of exhibitors, with more than 800 companies, be a major presence at the fair; as the second-biggest exporter and fourth-largest market, Germany is also a heavyweight when it comes to research and development work in the global machine tool industry.



So all eyes are focused on what will happen in the months ahead. Order bookings from abroad are perceptibly stabilizing. While export orders for German machine tools fell by 18 percent during the year’s first quarter, the drop had shrunk to eight percent in the year’s first five months up to May. Experience has shown that this will be followed by a consolidation in domestic orders after a time-lag of several months.



The investment plans of Germany’s major customer groupings also give persuasive grounds for a more optimistic assessment. Though in the current year growth of only 1.7 percent is being forecast, the figure predicted for 2014 is set to exceed 7 percent again. Encouraging signals are also coming from the Ifo business climate index in the capital goods industry. Expectations for future business developments have been indicating an uptrend until June of this year.



Against this background, the VDW (German Machine Tool Builders’ Association) expects that orders for machine tools will receive further impetus from the EMO Hannover. Order trends in the past show that this has regularly been the case after an EMO Hannover. “And this can be confidently predicted after this year’s event as well”, concludes Mr. Welcker.