In the first quarter of 2011, order bookings in the German machine tool industry showed three-figure growth rates. Compared to the preceding year’s equivalent period, orders in the months January to March rose by 130%. Domestic and export demand developed well-nigh identically: order bookings from the domestic market were up by 127%, demand from abroad by 132%.

“The sector has picked up speed faster and more vigorously than we anticipated back in the autumn”, says Dr. Wilfried Schfer, executive director of the VDW (German Machine Tool Builders’ Association) in Frankfurt am Main. "This, is now showing up spectacularly in the sales figures, with a steep rise of 45% in the year’s first quarter: with these superlative results order bookings are rapidly approaching the all-time high of 2007; sales are as yet a good tenth below the peak level of 2008.

The good performance is also being reflected in the capacity utilisation level, which at 93.8% in April of this year had almost returned to the figure last achieved in the boom year of 2008. The order backlog, too, at 8.7 months in February of this year, is not far below the peak figure of 2008. The sector is currently employing a total of 64,100 people, roughly the pre-vious year’s figure.