MHIA Forecast: Slowdown

After several consecutive years of growth, including a strong 2007, the materials handling industry is expected to contract modestly in 2008 and 2009 before resuming growth mode in 2010.

By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 4/30/2008

That was one of the highlights from an overview of the $156 billion materials handling and logistics industry presented by the Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA) at a press conference yesterday.

“We have had double-digit growth for the last few years,” said Hal Vandiver, MHIA’s executive vice president of business development. “But there is a business cycle.”

Last year, the total consumption of materials handling equipment was up 5.3% over 2006, while new orders grew 8.3% and shipments grew 8.9%. For the coming year, MHIA expects overall consumption (defined as production plus imports less exports) to contract by 5% in 2008 and 2009; new orders are expected to lessen by 5% to 7% and shipments are expected to contract 2% to 4% in the same period.

While some areas of the industry, including industrial trucks, are already experiencing a slowdown, Vandiver said other areas are still growing. “The overhead handling industry, including cranes, hoists and monorails, is still growing at double-digit rates because of expansion at the ports,” Vandiver said. “Our conveyor members are still growing.”

Not all of the news was about the economy. John Nofsinger, MHIA’s CEO, outlined a number of new initiatives over the last year focused on raising the industry’s profile.

American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN): MHIA, the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association (MHEDA) and eight other organizations representing more than 8,000 companies came together to fill a gap in disaster response networks.

Materials Handling and Logistics Summit: Held last summer in Montana, the summit brought together users, materials handling providers, consultants and educators to find ways to attract, educate, recruit, train and retain high-quality people in the industry. “While these are not simple problems to solve, we identified 14 themes and came up with 51 initiatives to pursue,” Nofsinger said.  

MHEDA’s Gateway Program: One of the responses from the summit was The Gateway Program, developed by MHEDA’s Industry Advocacy Committee. A Web portal designed to build a bridge between academia and the industry, the site allows students interested in a career in the industry to post resumes online at no charge. Likewise, industry professionals can post job openings by areas of specialty, present guest lectures on requested topics and facilitate site visits to customer applications. More than 70 students have posted resumes and are actively seeking full-time employment or other opportunities, according to Liz Richards, executive vice president of MHEDA.  

Initiatives like ALAN and the Gateway Program were just two of the ways MHIA is working to make the materials handling industry more visible, Nofsinger added. “Our commitment to relevance and excellence will continue at ProMat 2009 in Chicago,” he said.