After a hopeful start to the year for many, weak demand, persistently high energy costs and the shortage of skilled labour are currently weighing on the mood among manufacturers of plastic packaging in Germany. According to an IK survey, more than half of companies rate the current economic situation as poor and do not expect any improvement in the coming months.
The reason for the current crisis is weak demand: More than one in two manufacturers rate the current demand for plastic packaging and films as poor or very poor. Only five per cent describe demand as good. This is the result of a survey conducted by the IK Industrievereinigung Kunststoffverpackungen e.V. among its more than 250 member companies.
In addition to full customer warehouses, falling raw material prices since March have also put pressure on demand. Two out of three manufacturers expect that Sales prices for plastic packaging continue to fall in the summer months become.
As a result, almost one in five companies has significantly reduced its production. A further 38 per cent of companies responded by reducing production to a medium extent and introducing short-time working. Only 19 per cent of the companies surveyed are producing without restrictions. There are no signs of a trend reversal in the coming months. More than one in three companies anticipates a reduction in the industry's labour force.
After the plastics recyclers A massive drop in sales at the beginning of June the IK asked its members what impact the crisis is having on the use of recyclates in plastic packaging.
„For the individual companies, the use of recyclates is stable on average: on a scale of 1 (sharply decreased) to 100 (sharply increased), the use of recyclates reaches an average of 48 points. The companies that are using less recyclates than before mainly blame this on the weak demand for plastic packaging (48%). In second place with 19 per cent each are customer wishes and the lower prices for virgin plastic.“
Dr Martin Engelmann, Managing Director of the IK
The difficult framework conditions for industrial production in Germany are also affecting the plastics packaging industry: „After all Eleven per cent of the companies surveyed are specifically thinking about relocating abroad, five per cent are already in the process of relocating parts of their production or the entire company. Deindustrialisation is taking place before our eyes and it is happening faster than many would have thought,“ warns Engelmann and calls on politicians to stop this trend. The fact that almost every second plastic packaging manufacturer is planning investments in Germany gives cause for hope.
Source: IK
