The order books of German industrial companies are fuller than ever.
The number of orders in June grew by 0.5 percent compared to the previous month, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Wednesday.
Compared to the same month last year, there was an increase of 14.1 percent.
"This means that the order backlog in manufacturing has reached a new high since records began in 2015," as the statisticians emphasized.
The reason for this is the shortage of primary products that existed in Ukraine even before the Russian war, which is being exacerbated by the corona wave in Germany’s most important trading partner China with regular lockdowns.
Because of the supply chains that have been disrupted as a result, many companies are still having problems processing their orders.
Open orders from Germany increased by 2.0 percent compared to the previous month, while those from abroad fell by 0.3 percent.
The reach of the order backlog fell slightly to 8.0 months in June, after having been at 8.1 months in May.
This indicates how many months the companies would theoretically have to produce with constant sales without new incoming orders in order to process the existing orders.
The range of 11.8 months is particularly high for manufacturers of capital goods such as machines and vehicles.
If the delivery bottlenecks resolve in the coming months, this could stimulate production in German industry.
However, the procurement of raw materials and primary products is likely to be a major problem for German industry in the second half of the year.
In July, 73.3 percent of the companies surveyed complained about corresponding bottlenecks, as the Munich Ifo Institute found out in its monthly survey.
"In addition to the fundamental shortage of electronic components, problems in global logistics, especially in shipping, continue to contribute to the procurement problems," said Klaus Wohlrabe, head of the Ifo surveys.