The latest US orders data from our colleagues at AMT points to a strong end to what has been a weak but not disastrous year for the machine tool market with orders 30% above the November average. In contrast, cutting tool sales fell back from a surprisingly strong October but with the Boeing strike ending, 2025 may be a better year.
The US Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO) programme tracks orders in the US market, based on the reports from participants in the survey. In the first eleven months of 2024 (January to November), total machine tool orders were -5.7% lower than in the same period of 2023 and the rolling-annual total is only -4.2% lower than in the previous 12 months. Both of these comparisons (which will coincide in the December numbers) have seen the reduction compared to the previous period getting smaller month-by-month during 2024 and it is increasingly looking as though the machine tool cycle may have bottomed-out.
The AMT press release notes that contract machine shops increased their orders again in November and although aerospace manufacturers orders were down, they remain at a relatively high level. It also suggests that “with a tendency for manufacturers to expend their capital budgets by year’s end, orders from December 2024 could show a strong end to an irregular year.”
Despite this positive outlook, all but one of the six regions are ending the year in negative territory – the exception is the West where orders in the first 11 months of the year are +15% higher than in the same period of 2023. The reductions are led by the South-Central region (-18%), with the North-Central-East (-12%) and North-East (-11%) also in double-digits; the South-East (-3%) and North-Central-West (-2%) areas have smaller changes.
The US Cutting Tool Market Report (CTMR) tracks orders for tooling on a similar basis, except it uses shipments rather than orders (there is little difference in these measures for tooling). In the first eleven months of this year, shipments were just -0.3% lower than the same months of 2023 (January to November) and the 12-month rolling total has the same rate of change. These are the first negative readings since 2021 and there are clear signs now that this part of the market is past its peak.
You can download the press releases for the two surveys from the AMT web-site at https://www.amtonline.org/topic/intelligence, with the CTMR release also published on the USCTI web-site at www.uscti.com (go to the News tab); alternatively, you can request either or both releases from MTA and we can make sure you get them when they are published each month. We have attached a set of charts tracking the rolling 12-month totals from these two surveys which you can download below.