German machinery exports to China drop 19 percent

Difficulties in China’s market pushed exports of German plastics and rubber machinery down 19 percent in 2015, to 653 million euros ($713.4 million).

The German machinery association VDMA released the figures ahead of Chinaplas, which is scheduled for April 25-28 in Shanghai. The data shows that German exports of plastics and rubber machinery fell roughly to the same level in euros as where they were at in 2012, after a huge increase in 2013 and a smaller drop of 5.5 percent in 2014.

The association did not comment on why exports dropped, but the numbers mirror reports from Chinese plastics equipment manufacturers.

Haitian International Holdings Ltd., China’s largest injection molding machine maker, said its domestic sales dropped last year, although more modestly than German figures, falling 4 percent to 4.86 billion Chinese yuan ($748.7 million).

Haitian said some of its domestic peers reported “more than [a] double-digit drop in sales figures in 2015,” and noted that the Chinese manufacturing purchasing managers index has been in contraction since March 2015.

Still, China Machinery remains a large market. In 2014, Germany was the largest exporter of plastics equipment to China, accounting for 32.9 percent of all imported machines in China. The second-largest exporter, Japan, in 2014 sent 445 million euros ($540.8 million) of imported equipment to China.

Taiwan and South Korea were the third and fourth largest sources of plastics and rubber machinery imports in China in 2014, respectively, VDMA said. 2015 figure are not yet available.