In fact, Dunsford and ECSN expect demand to remain ‘flat’. “This time last year,” Dunsford noted, “the OECD was predicting global GDP would grow by 3.9%, but only India bettered that. This year, the prediction is for a 3.3% growth in GDP and 2.4% for the UK. In real terms, that’s flat.”
However, ECSN chairman Adam Fletcher believes it’s not a question of ‘if’ a recovery will come, but ‘when’ and ‘how strong’ it will be. “The frenetic pace of merger and acquisition activity in the electronic components markets is likely to slow in 2016, but the outcome of this consolidation will take another 18 months to work through. I suspect that, in 2016, we will continue to ‘bump along’ at the bottom of the recovery cycle, with much stronger consistent growth likely into 2017-2018.”
Recovery in UK demand could be spurred by investments in infrastructure and by reshoring. “People have been talking about reshoring for some time, but there is now real evidence of it happening. In the future, companies are going to want systems made closer to home and there will be better times for CEMs in the future,” Dunsford noted.
