USMTO and CTMR, August 2022: The US Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO) programme tracks orders in the US market, based on the reports from participants. In the first 8 months of 2022, orders were running at +5.3% above the same months (January to August) last year.
With IMTS occurring in September, there should be another boost to orders, although it should be noted that the last 5 months of 2021 were exceptionally strong, so the full year is likely to end a little down on what was a record year in 2021. The final quarter is likely to be a challenge for the machine tool market; the easing of supply chain problems Is not symmetrical and long lead times coupled with a general economic slowdown could pose a threat to order activity at the end of 2022 and into 2023.
The trends in the six regions neatly divide into 3 pairs – modest down, modest up and strong growth. Note that we are using the metal cutting data for this but as this accounts for over 98% of the total this is not a major issue. The “modest down” pair of regions are the North-Central-West (-7%) and North-East (-3%), with a little growth occurring in the West (+7%) and North-Central-East (+8%) areas; the “star” performers are the South-East (+23%) and South-Central (+33%) groups of States.
The US Cutting Tool Market Report (CTMR) tracks orders for tooling on a similar basis and for the January to August period, orders increased by +7.9% compared to the same months in 2021. The 12-month rolling total for the cutting tool market is at its highest since June 2020 but we are still some way short of the pre-pandemic peak. There is no regional analysis for the cutting tool report.
You can download the press releases for the two surveys from the AMT web-site at www.amtonline.org/topic/intelligence, with the CTMR release also published on the USCTI web-site at www.uscti.com; alternatively, you can request either or both releases from MTA and we can make sure you get them when they are published each month.