Equipment sales booming

The European market for food processing equipment is still growing at 4% a year, despite moves by many manufacturers to tighten purse strings in response to rising energy costs.

According to IMS Research, if growth continued at 4% a year, European sales should reach euro 9.2bn by 2009.

The strongest growth was in central and eastern Europe, said senior IMS analyst Don Tait. However, energy-efficient kit and robotics were selling well in more mature markets in western Europe. "Technical innovation is enticing producers to replace obsolete mechanical solutions with more versatile handling through robotics and more extensive use of programmable logic controllers, servos and machine vision."

Chris Pickles, UK general manager at packaging equipment supplier Ishida, said: "Things have picked up in the last three months, although they have been tough over the last year. People are also expecting a payback in less than 18 months, not two to three years, which used to be the case."

While many food firms were "reluctant to put their hands in their pockets", added Siemens account manager Adrian Palmer, energy-efficient motors and gearboxes were selling well as firms sought to reduce capital costs and raise efficiency.