The robotics industry is booming worldwide and yet in Germany it is having to lower its expectations for the current year. Last year, more industrial robots were delivered worldwide than ever before, as the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) announced on Tuesday on the basis of preliminary figures at Automatica in Munich. However, the German trade association VDMA Robotics and Automation also cut its forecast for 2022 by four percentage points on Tuesday.

"The sales figures for industrial robots have recovered strongly worldwide, making 2021 the most successful financial year to date for the robotics industry," said IFR President Milton Guerry. In total, the IFR counted 468,800 units, which corresponds to an increase of 27%. "With technological advances and the continuing trend towards automation, demand is reaching a high level across all sectors."

His German counterpart, the Chairman of VDMA Robotics and Automation, Frank Konrad, also reported a surge in demand. In the first four months of the current year, incoming orders had increased by 38% and the industry was "booming", he said at the Automatica trade fair in Munich. However, the German industry has not yet reached pre-crisis levels: although turnover grew faster than expected last year by 13% to 13.6 billion euros, it was still at 14.7 billion in 2019.

Supply chain problems depress forecast

This figure will probably not be reached this year either, as the trade association has cut its growth forecast by four points to 6%. This corresponds to a turnover of 14.4 billion euros. The reason for the lower forecast, despite the boom in orders, are major problems in the supply chains, as Konrad said. Among other things, there are bottlenecks in chips, sensors and drives.

"However, suppliers will not be able to process the orders on the books as quickly as usual," explained Konrad. It is difficult to say how long it will take to process the orders. The capacities in the industry are there, said Konrad. But nobody knows when the chip shortage will end.

On Tuesday, the IFR did not issue a current forecast for the current year. Last year's strong growth was mainly due to the Asia and Australia region, where almost three quarters of all new industrial robots were installed, at 354,500. In Europe, there was an increase of 15% to 78,000 newly installed robots.