Machinery: International Sales Results to July 2026

July 2026 results by exporting area

The update of ExportPlanning data to July confirms that, in the first seven months of 2026, international trade in goods maintained a sustained pace of expansion and even strengthened somewhat, as documented in the recent article “World Trade July 2026: Increasingly Polarised Growth”.

In July Machinery exports grew
mainly for Asian and EU companies...

July 2026 data for the Machinery industry¹ showed an acceleration in exports, particularly for companies in Asia (+9.3% year-on-year, at constant prices²) and the EU (+6.5%).
In particular, the export performance of EU Machinery producers remains in line with, or even slightly better than, the world average: in the first 7 months of the year, EU exports of Machinery recorded cumulative year-on-year growth of 3.9 per cent (constant prices), slightly more dynamic than the world average (+3.7%).

... accelerating compared with the first half of the year....

World Exports of Machinery

July 2026 results for EU exports by sector

Analysis of the data updated to July on EU exports of Machinery reveals a rather mixed picture at sector level.

The cyclical picture for EU Machinery exports
nonetheless remains patchy

Specifically, in the first 7 months of 2026, the sector breakdown of EU Machinery sales shows the following cumulative year-on-year performances at constant prices:

• Leading sectors:
• Machine tools for hard materials: although decelerating, July data confirm the sector’s strong growth phase, with year-on-year growth of more than 23 percentage points at constant prices;
• Metalworking machine tools: the sector continues to show growth, amounting to 9.4 percentage points in the first 7 months of the year;
• Food processing machinery: in the first 7 months of the year the sector recorded year-on-year growth of 8.7 percentage points, confirmed by the positive trend seen in July;
• Lagging sectors:
• Printing machinery: the sector is down by more than 9 percentage points year-on-year at constant prices, with faint signs of easing difficulties in July;
• Semiconductor manufacturing machinery: despite an excellent year-on-year performance in July, the sector shows a decline of 8.5 percentage points over the first 7 months of the year;
• Textile machinery: the sector faced further difficulties in July, with a double-digit year-on-year decline at constant prices, bringing the cumulative result for the first 7 months of the year to a negative balance of more than 5 percentage points.

EU Exports of Machinery

Conclusions

Data updated to July show an overall favourable, though uneven, picture for European Machinery sales. At aggregate level, EU exports of Machinery accelerated sharply in July (+6.5% year-on-year at constant prices, compared with +3.4% in the first half). Cumulative growth for the first seven months thus rises to +3.9%, slightly above the world average. This is an encouraging signal, confirming the competitiveness of European supply at a time of relatively dynamic international trade.

However, this result should be read in light of several factors that exporters in this industry cannot afford to overlook.

1. The first concerns competitive pressure. In July, Asian exporters accelerated even more markedly (+9.3%), starting from volumes already higher than European ones. The industry’s dynamics are therefore increasingly focused on the contest between Asia and the EU in third markets. In this context, defending market shares requires close attention to the most contested destination markets.
2. The second concerns sector heterogeneity. Alongside sectors in a strong growth phase, such as machine tools for hard materials and for metalworking, food processing machinery and special-purpose machinery, structural difficulties persist in textile, printing and papermaking machinery. Semiconductor manufacturing machinery is a case apart: July’s exceptional result (+57.2%) is not yet enough to reverse the negative year-to-date balance. A single month is not sufficient to speak of a change in trend.
3. The third concerns the first signs of a slowdown in some sectors that had so far been positive. These include packaging machinery (−4.9% in July) and extrusion machinery (−11.0%), as well as the deceleration in machine tools for hard materials. These signals will need to be verified in the coming months.

For European Machinery companies, therefore, the positive average is not enough to guide decision-making. What is needed is a detailed reading, by individual product and destination market, that makes it possible to seize opportunities in growing segments promptly and to identify in good time the markets where competition is intensifying. At a time that remains uncertain internationally, continuous monitoring of trade flows becomes a decisive tool for planning export strategies.

To enable constant monitoring of target markets at a “product-specific” level, ExportPlanning offers the Customs Declarations Database service, an on-demand supply of monthly market data that can be customised by customs code and market of interest.
In this respect, ExportPlanning’s Customs Declarations Database service makes it possible to track the evolution of trade flows continuously by customs code and destination market, supporting strategic decisions in an international environment that remains uncertain.

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