EMVA market survey shows 4% sales increase for European machine vision industry in 2007

The EMVA has recently completed its annual European Vision Technology Market Statistics. The survey shows that the European suppliers of vision technology are continuing their growth course: In 2007 they raised global sales by 4%. Growth rates, however, vary considerably depending on the product type.

Standard products in high demand
Easy-to-use and inexpensive standard products are clearly in high demand. Thanks to more efficient hardware and software, these standard products are increasingly performing tasks for which more complex customer-specific solutions had to be created to date. In 2007 vision sensors - turnkey systems in a compact housing aimed at a specific application - posted the highest increase in turnover (+58% compared with the previous year). Nonetheless, there are many areas where challenging inspection tasks can only be tackled with high-performance application-specific systems. In the lower and middle price segment inexpensive standard systems are therefore creating new application areas whereas more complex application-specific systems are stil in demand in the higher price segment and are pushing the limits of what is technically and economically feasible. The European manufacturers of machine vision cameras also recorded good business and expanded sales by 15% in 2007 compared to the previous year. This underscores the success of industrial cameras developed and produced in Europe which are exported in large numbers to North America and Asia.

Internationalisation continuing
Exports by European machine vision suppliers have steadily increased in last few years. More than 30% of sales were recorded outside of Europe in 2007. Approximately 15% of turnover was realised in the Americas. Exports to Asia also increased substantially and reached a share of about 15% of total turnover. The rise in exports to China was a major contributory factor In this case: In 2007 almost 5% of the total sales volume was achieved there.

New application areas for machine vision
Some 87% of turnover of the European machine vision industry in 2007 was attained with applications in the area of industrial production. The most important customer industry for machine vision is still the automotive industry (including suppliers) with a share of 26% followed by the electronics and electrical industry (10%) and glass production (9%). Great potential for new applications of vision technology can be found outside the arena of industrial production. These non-manufacturing applications accounted for 13% of sector turnover in 2007. Social mega-topics such as environmental protection and resource conservation, the need for security or demographic change are opening up new application areas and additional markets.

All European machine vision companies are invited to participate in the annual EMVA market survey and in turn will receive the complete study results free of charge. The study can also be purchased for the price of 1,200 euros (Contact: info@emva.org).