German robotics and automation sector reaches €15bn

In 2018, the German robotics and automation sector reached the 15 billion euro mark for industry sales for the first time - an increase of 4%. "The new record shows that worldwide demand for robotics and automation technologies from Germany remains high. However, the general political uncertainty and cooling of the global economy led to a more moderate growth than originally expected," said Wilfried Eberhardt, Chairman of the VDMA Robotics + Automation Association. "Continuing global economic uncertainties do not permit a precise forecast for 2019. We are currently expecting growth of between 2% and 5% in the current year”.

According to a preliminary analysis of the 2018 data, the development in the subsectors varied: with an increase in sector sales of 9% to a total of 8.3 billion euros, Integrated Assembly Solutions was able to continue its dynamic growth course of the previous year. This was due, in particular, to a very high order backlog and strong domestic business. In 2018, Machine Vision was able to maintain the record level of 2.6 billion euros set in the previous year. Robotics, on the other hand, only slightly missed the previous year's sales record of 4.2 billion euros and closed 2018 with industry sales of 4.1 billion euros. This is mainly attributed to the weakness in automobile sales - especially in the main market China.