Material bottlenecks and a shortage of skilled workers are hampering production at and deliveries from machinery and plant construction firms in Germany, according to a flash survey conducted by the country’s engineering federation VDMA (Frankfurt; www.vdma.org). Of the 520 federation companies participating in the poll, more than 30 belonged to the organisation’s plastics and rubber machinery division (KuG, Frankfurt; http://kug.vdma.org).

Upheavals in the wake of the Ukraine war, pandemic-related lockdowns in China, and container shipping jams have limited the supply of materials and hurt the production and delivery capabilities of companies, VDMA chief economist Ralph Wiechers said. He noted that managers responding to the flash poll said they do not expect the situation to improve before the second half of 2023 at the earliest.

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The umbrella organisation for national plastics and rubber machine makers, Euromap (www.euromap.org), recently pointed out the difficult situation on the supplier market (see Plasteurope.com of 28.06.2022). Supply bottlenecks, particularly in semiconductors sector and intermediate products, threaten to further reduce the market share of European plastics and rubber machine manufacturers in global competition.