ZVEI – Electrical industry sees order surge mid-year
Domestic orders pick up strongly in June – foreign business weakens
In June 2026, the German electrical and digital industries recorded a strong increase of 13.3 percent in order intake compared to the previous year.
“This latest growth is not due to orders from abroad, but rather to domestic orders, which rose by an unusually strong 60.7 percent. Large orders in the information and communication technology sector were the key drivers,” said ZVEI Chief Economist Dr. Andreas Gontermann.
Orders from foreign customers, on the other hand, declined by 11.3 percent in June.
Orders from eurozone countries increased by 9.1 percent in June. At the same time, those from countries outside the common currency area fell by 19.1 percent.
For the first half of 2026 as a whole, the industry recorded a 9.5 percent increase in orders compared to the same period of the previous year. The development was more balanced: domestic orders rose by 9.7 percent during this period, while foreign orders increased by a similarly high 9.4 percent. Orders from the Eurozone (+9.5%) and from non-EU countries (+9.3%) also increased at roughly the same rate.
Price-adjusted electrical production also rose sharply in June: by 9.3 percent.
“This also benefited the growth in real production for the first half of the year as a whole, which now reached 0.7 percent and thus moved closer to the two percent forecast for the year as a whole,” said Gontermann.
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“In light of the Iran war, concerns about material shortages in the broadest sense have also increased significantly again,” said Gontermann. “Most recently, 29 percent of companies were affected – compared to only 19 percent three months earlier and just 11 percent three months before that.”
Most recently, 865,000 people were employed in the German electrical and digital industries – 1.5 percent fewer than a year earlier. 11,700 are on short-time work.
Finally: The business climate in the German electrical and digital industries improved again in July. Both the assessment of the current situation and general business expectations were noticeably better than in the previous month.
After their strong increase in the previous month, more specific export expectations declined again in July – from plus 15 to plus 5 percentage points. Overall, however, they remained positive.
SourceZVEI
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