Belgian Machinery Industry

The machinery industry is the fastest growing industrial sector measured by employment in Belgium. The last 5 years an annual growth rate of 4.5% was achieved and the Belgian machinery industry was able to increase its EU market share with 10%.

An important driver for that performance was the doubling of investments in the machinery industry over the 1998-2008 periods before the financial crisis.

Since 2010, investments have picked up again and Belgian machinery companies are transforming themselves to accelerate their product development rate and flexibility. To position its customers in the pole, the Belgian machinery industry is strongly R&D driven. It invests 7% of its added value on R&D and employs over 10% of the total Belgian research head count. The industry accelerated its research efforts on energy efficiency in the last decade and achieved an average energy consumption reduction for its products of 15%.

The Belgian textile machinery industry counts 30 companies, has a turnover of 1 Billion euro and a headcount of 4000. Its companies are active in machinery for indoor textiles (carpet, upholstery, velvet, table – bed linen …), garment textiles, technical textiles and textile finishing. Belgium produces the fastest air jet weaving machines in the world. The Belgian textile machinery companies pursue technological leadership strategies.

That approach is materialized in the continuous presence of textile machinery companies in the top 5 of Belgian patent applications. The Belgian textile machinery industry is heavily involved in the open innovation mechatronics research center www.FMTC.be.

The industry is strongly export driven with a core of high-tech demanding EU customers for fast cross sectorial product development, in addition to our main export markets being the European Union, United States, China and India.