(EMVA: Munich) -- During a press conference at AUTOMATICA 2010, European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) Vice President Cor Maas noted, “The European machine vision industry is well on track to return to substantial growth this year. Results of our current European market survey point to an 11-percent increase in turnover in 2010.” 

The current EMVA forecast for 2010 comes as good news after a difficult 2009. As a result of the financial and economic crisis, total turnover of machine vision technology in 2009 declined by 21 percent. “This decrease lies in the corridor of the EMVA forecast published in April 2009,” said Maas. “With over 24 percent, exports to the Americas saw the sharpest decrease, along with a drop of nearly 22 percent in European sales. The turnover with Asian countries was somewhat more robust and declined by just under 19 percent.”

Sales to all dominant manufacturing industries for the machine vision industry declined by double digits in 2009. Turnover with the most important customer sector—the automotive industry—went down by 34.2 percent. Other industries, however, showed only a smaller decrease in turnover and thus even managed to increase their share of total machine vision turnover.

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