German precision machine tool sales will not increase significantly in 2012

According to Lothar Hung, chairman of the Association of Precision Machine Tools of the German Federation of Machinery Manufacturers, the period of booming of the major customer industry has ended and it is predicted that the sales growth of precision machine tools in 2012 will be only 7%. In 2011, German precision machine tool companies achieved sales of 10.2 billion euros, a year-on-year increase of 21%. Thanks to the expansion of production in the automotive and machine tool industries, sales of cutting machine tools and fixtures have increased significantly. Process measurement and monitoring technologies have also achieved good results. Machine tools have achieved their first harvest since the financial crisis.