As expected, in 2019 the soaring rise in turnover of the past years has come to a halt: German plastics and rubber machinery manufacturers had to resign themselves to a turnover fall of 6 per cent. "However, after 11 years of growth this break did not come as a surprise for the industry," Ulrich Reifenhäuser, Chairman of the VDMA trade association Plastics and Rubber Machinery, puts it in a nutshell. "In many major customer industries, above all the automotive sector, signs suggested investment restraint, something that had already become clear for a while when looking at the order books. Moreover, there is the image problem of plastics," Reiferhäuser adds.
