IVAM Research - Press Release

The impact of the ongoing economic crisis on the microtechnology, nanotechnology and advanced materials industries is expected to be less noticeable in 2010 than in the previous business year. The expectations for 2010 prove that the industry has not lost its optimism. In the second half of 2009, “excellent business” has been reported by individual companies. Due to an increasing demand from the semiconductor sector, some companies have directly changed over from short-time work to weekend shifts.

In total, the European microtechnology, nanotechnology and advanced materials companies achieved a turnover of just under 44 billion Euros in 2009. According to the industry, sales in 2009 clearly went down, much more so than in the previous year, 2008. More than one quarter (27%) of the companies reported a turnover decreasing more than 10% - only one tenth of the companies (10%) had expected cutbacks on such a big scale for 2009. The percentage of companies that were able to report a turnover increasing more than 10%, however, has fallen from 30% in 2008 to only just 12% in 2009.

More information at www.ivam-research.de