Extruder sales: Strong, growing, growing, stalledExtruder sales: Strong, growing, growing, stalled
That in effect is the outlook at MachinePoint, a supplier of used plastics processing and packaging machinery, on recent demand trends for extrusion equipment in (respectively) the Middle East, Brazil and Latin America, India and Europe. The company currently has about 188 pipe and profile extruders in its catalogue and sells at least two per month.
June 1, 2011
Gema Álvarez, marketing manager at MachinePoint, provided PlasticsToday with those figures and offered some additional insight into the company's report of extruder sales. The company sees that Europe's extrusion market is "stalled" with processors in both the pipe extrusion market as well as those involved in window profile extrusion making little or no investment, largely in response to slow construction markets across the Continent. Consolidation and transfer of some work to lower labor-cost countries in Eastern Europe is ongoing and the lack of investment is not expected to change soon.
These transitions are also leading to an increase in the availability of good used extruders, she explained, with quality used machinery available for processors who want "to purchase European brands at good prices." Such processors may want to move quickly as, according to MachinePoint, it sees little sign of major investment in the European extrusion community anytime soon, meaning that supply of good, used machines is limited and not being replenished.
With used extruders in good condition entering the market due to consolidation in Europe, how has this affected the price for these machines? How good are the deals? We asked, and Álvarez explained that the main problem (for used machine sellers) is that machine OEMs are selling their extruders at major discounts. "But used machinery (prices) have not come down so much as they tend to base the prices on book value, rather than market supply-demand rules," she added. The result is that the used machinery market has been a tough one as well. "However, for those one with a tight budget, good quality used machinery is still a good option," she added, and noted that her company filters all the machinery it finds in the market and only agrees to sell the top 20% of the machines currently for sale, "as the remaining 80% is not in very good condition."
So Europe is in a stall. Demand in the Middle East remains strong, according to MachinePoint, mostly for pipe extrusion machinery and specifically those branded Cincinnati Extrusion, Battenfeld or KraussMaffei. (Ed. Note: Cincinnati and Battenfeld, long sister firms with separate brands, have merged to form battenfeld-cincinnati.)
Growing, active markets for extrusion machinery include India and Brazil, according to MachinePoint, with an active construction market in each supporting this demand. In these two countries, local extruder manufacturers offer "furious competition" to competitively priced, high quality European used machinery, with import duties also making life hard for used machine sales. Not just Brazil but all of Latin America is also active, says MachinePoint, but currency conversion rates are making sales of European machinery difficult.
Looking ahead, the used machinery marketer expects the North African market to increase its demand for extrusion machinery once political stability returns.
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