In the first nine months of the current year, both incoming orders and sales in the electrical automation sector increased significantly year-on-year by 4% and 6% respectively. "The upward trend in electrical automation is unbroken in its tenth year and will continue," said Jörg Freitag, Chairman of the VDMA Electrical Automation Executive Board, at the VDMA press conference on November 28, 2018. "We expect sales growth of 6% for 2018 as a whole," he added. "All sub-sectors in electrical automation showed a clear upward trend," said Freitag.

Accordingly, the Sensors division recorded a 4% increase in incoming orders and 6% growth in sales, while Control Technology recorded a 6% increase in incoming orders and 5% growth in sales. The 'Other Products' division also contributed to the success of Electrical Automation with incoming orders up 2% and sales growth of more than 7%.

What will 2019 bring?

The industry continues to expect an increase in the coming year. "We are forecasting a 4% increase in sales for 2019," says Jörg Freitag. However, there are considerable uncertainties on the market, such as the further development of the trade disputes instigated by the USA. "The effects of Brexit, which is due to take place in March 2019, cannot be estimated at present either."

New managing director from January

On January 1, 2019, the German Electrical Automation Association will have a new top management team: Dr. Reinhard Heister will replace Rainer Glatz as Managing Director of the association. Rainer Glatz headed the association, which most recently comprised more than 230 automation companies, for over 18 years and is retiring at the turn of the year. Heister was previously at VDMA Robotics + Automation, where he drove forward the standardization of Industry 4.0 using OPC UA in the robotics and industrial image processing sectors and played a key role in shaping the overall OPC UA strategy at VDMA. Prior to this, he worked for several years as a project manager at Karl Mayer Textilmaschinenfabrik, where he had a great deal of contact with electrical automation.