The only region to report declining demand during May was the Northeast, where new orders for metal-cutting machinery slipped -3.3% from April to $69.24 million. Even so, that signifies a 19.3% increase over the region’s May 2017 total metal-cutting machinery, and raise the year-to-date total 24.1% to $355.32 million.
In the Southeast region, new orders for metal-cutting machinery increased 71.0% from April to $65.89 million, which is an 83.6% rise over last May’s comparable figure. The region’s January-May total for metal-cutting machinery is $230.16 million, a 21.7% improvement for 2018.
May new orders for metal-cutting machinery in the North Central-East region increased to $120.60 million, a rise of 28.0% from April and of 54.2% from May 2017. For the year-to-date, the region’s metal-cutting machinery orders total $392.42 million, or 35.0% higher than last year’s five-month result.
In the North Central-West region, total manufacturing technology orders during May rose 15.3% from April and 7.9% from May 2017, to $90.75 million. For the year-to-date, regional manufacturing-technology new orders are up 40.3% from last year at $415.45 million.
In the South-Central region, new orders for metal cutting machinery rose 64.5% from April and 68.2% from May 2017, to $49.76 million. That bring the current-year total to $222.25 million, or 41.8% higher than last year’s comparable result.
Last, in the West region, new orders for metal-cutting machinery totaled $78.85 million during May, which is 11.5% higher than the April result and 40.6% higher than the May 2017 result. The regional YTD total for metal-cutting machinery orders is $376.82 million, an increase of 19.6% over last year’s January-May order volume.
