Posted on January 30, 2019
Busy Year for Subcontract Manufacturing
2018 was a good year for subcontractors with the market up 31% on 2017.
Despite uncertainty for the UK manufacturing industry as a whole, the latest Contract Manufacturing Index (CMI) for 2018 was 227, which compares to a figure of 173 for the previous year.
Within those headline figures though there was a 7% downward trend through the year – although this eased off in the second half.
The CMI for the fourth quarter of 2018 stood at 222 – up 61% on the equivalent quarter in 2017 and fractionally down (0.45%) on the previous quarter of 2018.
Looking at the fourth quarter figures by process, the subcontract machining market was down 6.4% compared to the previous quarter but 47% higher than the equivalent quarter in 2017. Fabrication was down 4.1% on the previous quarter, but up 67% on what had been a pretty dreadful final quarter of 2017.
Comparing 2018 overall with 2017, machining rose by 16% and fabrication by 39%.
The CMI is produced by sourcing specialist Qimtek and reflects the total purchasing budget for outsourced manufacturing of companies looking to place business in any given month. This represents a sample of over 4,000 companies who could be placing business that together have a purchasing budget of more than £3.4bn and a supplier base of over 7,000 companies with a verified turnover in excess of £25bn.
