中国是德国塑料加工机械行业最大的出口市场之一。因此，VDMA塑料和橡胶机械协会一直密切关注与冠状病毒爆发有关的最新发展。

According to the German industry association, no member company maintains production facilities in the particularly affected Hubei region, and also no member has yet reported a coronavirus inflected case.

The Managing Director of VDMA Plastics and Rubber Machinery Association, Thorsten Kühmann, shared his views on the market situation and CHINAPLAS 2020 with CPRJ, the official media of CHINAPLAS:

The importance of the Chinese market not changed

Regarding when the market will return to normal, Thorsten Kühmann, Managing Director, commented that many member companies expect the situation to slowly level off again in March, and the outbreak “does not change the fundamental importance of the Chinese market for our industry in the future”.

The industry trade fair CHINAPLAS 2020 is rescheduled to take place on August 3-6, 2020 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (NECC), in Hongqiao, Shanghai.

VDMA Plastics and Rubber Machinery Association is one of the co-organizers of the CHINAPLAS 2020 concurrent event “Industry 4.0 Factory of the Future”.

Thorsten Kühmann believes the iconic industry trade fair “can certainly provide a positive impulse” especially when the Chinese economy is weakening as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.

The German plastics machinery industry recorded a decline of about 6% in sales for last year. Thorsten Kühmann expects the downturn to bottom out by the end of 2020 due to increasing investments in the automotive sector, but trade barriers remain a problem.

“Sales increases as a result of the investments will not occur before beginning of 2021. We therefore also expect a decline in sales in 2020 in the range of 2019,” he said.

No significant delivery problems so far due to coronavirus

VDMA Plastics and Rubber Machinery Association said the coronavirus outbreak has not yet led to significant delivery problems in the German mechanical engineering industry.

但是，由于机械工程的吞吐时间很长，因此“这些困难只会在接下来的几周内真正变得很明显”。

冠状病毒疫情尚未导致德国机械工程行业的重大交付问题。

除了其他行业的许多供应商的生产较慢外，机械工程公司还面临物流限制的挑战。

目前,公司s in Germany can still compensate for these difficulties by switching to other production locations or suppliers, but Thorsten Kühmann remarked that “the situation must be reassessed from week to week”.