London — Business confidence in the polyurethane machinery supplier sector may have reached an inflection point in 2018, according to the UTMcIndex.
Urethanes Technology International/UTECH-polyurethanes.com generated this year's Index after surveying machinery companies across the world in February and early March 2019.
The companies were asked if they want to expand the business; upgrade facilities; consolidate; build new plants; buy competitors or sell part or all of the company. We then normalise the results in each category by the number of respondents and an index is calculated. This accounts for how positive the actions are.
This year's index shows that the level of optimism was flat between 2017 and 2018, but higher than the five-year average. There was a general rise in the index between 2015 from 3.7 to 4.5 in 2017.
In addition, early conversations with a number of players in the sector suggest that 2019 is going to be a less positive year than 2018. This is because of global uncertainty around tariffs, uncertainty because of Brexit, and the feeling that there is a global slowdown on the way.
