In view of the significant increase in incoming orders,machine manufacturer KraussMaffei Technologies (KM, Munich / Germany; www.kraussmaffei.com) is confident that the crisis has bottomed out. The wealth of incoming orders should lead in the next financial year to a "robust increase in sales" said Management Board Chairman Dr. Dietmar Straub at a recent press conference in Zurich. It would, however, take a few years for sales to return to the record levels of the pre-crisis years. In the current financial year 2009/2010 (30.9.), the leading manufacturer of plastics machinery looks set to post sales of around EUR 750m (previous year: EUR 742m). With sales at their previous year's level, Straub said the company would continue to expand its market position in the present environment. He estimated the value of incoming orders for 2009/10 to be around EUR 800m (EUR 644m). At present, incoming orders were 25% above the comparable figure for the previous year.

All the segments – Injection Moulding Technology, Reaction Process Machinery and Extrusion Technology – had since recovered well, even if the upward trend had started at different times. All the plants could now be described as having "good to high" capacity utilisation. Short-time working – see Plasteurope.com of 19.10.2009 – at KM was halted in December 2009, and the number of employees had remained at around 3,600. There had been a few bottlenecks recently on the procurement side, extending machine delivery times.

The crisis, continued Straub, had speeded up the recent trends and had permanently changed the global plastics industry in two respects. On the one hand, the crisis had intensified the market shift in the direction of the threshold countries. At KM, sales in the BRIC countries were now more than double those in North America. In China, incoming orders in the first four months had more than doubled compared with the comparable figure for the previous year. On the other hand, said Straub, there was a mounting trend towards complete solutions. The company achieved around 70% of its sales with complex solutions involving more than one machine.

Straub concluded by saying that he was "cautiously optimistic" that the recovery would be sustained, providing the euro crisis was not accompanied by any negative surprises. KM is planning to invest in particular in its core technologies at its German sites in Munich and Hanover and its Swiss site in Näfels. It also intends to strengthen its presence in the Czech Republic and China.