Germany's association for plastics and rubber machinery, VDMA Kunststoff- und Gummimaschinen (KuG, Frankfurt; http://kug.vdma.org), has said incoming orders for the country's plastics and rubber machinery manufacturers went up by 14% in the year's second quarter.

"Though the first half of the year as a whole still shows a 6% decline, the industry is pleased to report in the last three months incoming orders have picked up again," announced Ulrich Reifenhäuser, the association's chairman. He added that the industry was pleased to see the positive numbers following a year of negative revenue trends. When comparing with the previous year, realised sales for the first six months of 2013 were at the same level but they picked up by 6% in the second quarter.

The KuG, one of 39 associations belonging to Germany's national engineering federation, VDMA, also reported that during the first half of 2013 the industry's foreign exports returned to the previous year's levels with the negative rates slowly dissipating as the year progressed. "The welcome trend upward in exports to Russia and the US continued with China, India and Turkey also showing substantial growth rates for the same period," noted Thorsten Kühmann, KuG's managing director.

Based on the figures up to, and including April, the KuG's recent prediction still pointed to a slight decline in sales of 1% for 2013 – see Plasteurope.com of 19.06.2013. The industry intends to update its forecast in time for October's "K 2013" exhibition in Düsseldorf.