The survey, based on reports from 175 member companies (including 115 in Germany), shows that the automotive sector was sector was again the biggest buyer of vision systems, accounting for 21% of turnover in the sector, and expanding by 17%. It was followed by the electronics and electrical industry (with 14.6% of total turnover), the food and beverage sector (6.5%), and metals (5.7%).
Sales to non-manufacturing sectors grew by 17% and accounted for 24% of all sales, with logistics and postal sorting applications giving the biggest impetus to growth.
Sales of machine vision systems rose by 19% in 2014, and components by 14%. Sales of cameras grew by 14.5% to reach a record level of more than €411m.
Machine vision exports from Europe grew by 20% during 2014.
Germany was again by far the largest machine vision market in Europe last year, accounting for almost 34% of all sales and increasing turnover by 16% to reach €1.9bn. The growth came mainly from exports. While German domestic turnover grew by 12%, exports went up by 19% to reach an all-time high of 59%. This year, German machine vision suppliers expect to boost their sales volume by a further 10%, taking turnover above the €2bn mark.
VDMA Machine Vision cautions that its European sample is statistically too small to estimate the total turnover of the European machine vision market accurately. But it is more confident of its figures for the German market which, it says, represents at least 40% of the total European market.