MOSCOW (MRC) -- Despite a slowdown in North America amid trade uncertainty, Engel Holding GmbH expects global sales to reach around EUR1.6bn for fiscal year 2018-19, marking a 6% increase in earnings over last year, as per Plasticsnewseurope.
Global sales for the 2017-18 fiscal year ending 31 March were EUR1.51bn, up 11% from the prior year, company leadership said during an 17 Oct news conference at Fakuma.
The Austrian maker of injection moulding presses, robots and automation systems cited Europe as the biggest contributor, making up 53% of the company's sales, followed by the Americas at 24% and Asia at 22%.
"We see kind of a shift from the previous years due to the current economic situation," Christoph Steger, Engel's chief sales officer, said, citing a 2% turnover that shifted from the Americas to Asia. Continued growth in central and Eastern Europe is balancing out a slowdown in the United Kingdom, where the consequences of Britain's exit, or Brexit, from the European Union are resulting in bouts of uncertainty, the company said.
"People are a bit reluctant with investments at the moment," Steger said of a "certain reservation" the company is seeing in parts of Europe because of confusion surrounding the Brexit strategy. Germany, specifically, continues to post the highest sales. Over the last five years, Engel has increased its sales by 50% in the country, where it employs 340 people across four locations.
Revenue growth in Asia has been the biggest for the Engel Group and is continuing to grow, Steger said. Stricter quality requirements in the medical and packaging industries are leading to increased demand, with China as the strongest driver of growth in the region.
This past April, Engel said it was investing EUR10.5m into expanding capacity for its Changzhou, China-based Wintec subsidiary. The investment marked the first expansion since the machinery maker launched the Wintec brand of standardised injection presses four years ago.
Recent economic developments in North America, however, are not as encouraging, the company said. The region is below last year's level of growth for the fiscal year's second quarter. Engel did not provide any specific figures, however.
The company said the slowdown in North America is primarily due to large international conglomerates that are taking a "wait-and-see approach" in response to the latest developments in economic policy.
Recent changes, including the Sept. 30 news that Canada will join Mexico and the United States in a revised North American Free Trade Agreement — now called ? the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — in addition to U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of new tariffs covering another $200 billion in Chinese imports, have been something all machinery companies "have to deal with," Steger said.
But with a "successor solution" to NAFTA on the table, Steger said Engel is "quite happy" and that many of the company's initial insecurities have been reduced.
MRC