Manufacturing technology consumption up 22% through February

AMTonline - February U.S. manufacturing technology consumption totaled $163.96 million, according to AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology and AMTDA, the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association. This total, as reported by companies participating in the USMTC program, was up 28.8% from January and up 22.1% from the total of $134.34 million reported for February 2009. With a year-to-date total of $291.27 million, 2010 is up 22.3% compared with 2009.

“Manufacturing technology orders start off 2010 up 22% through February, showing that the market has turned and is slowly recovering from the worst single year downturn in our industry’s history,” according to Douglas K. Woods, AMT president. “That increase could be twice as large if banks would ease credit restrictions. Our banks have a tenth of our GDP and nearly 24 times the required reserve in the Federal Depository when that money should be working to rebuild America.”