At the start of financial year 2009/2010, the German mechanical engineering industry slowly began to recover from deep recession. Orders received in November 2009 heralded a reversal of the trend; for the first time, there were indications not only of stabilisation, but also of improvement. Order intake in the mechanical engineering industry initially fell at the start of 2010, but in February, the upward trend of the previous months returned in force, rising by 34 percent in real terms from January to September 2010 compared with the same period in 2009.

In real terms, mechanical engineering production increased by 4.2 percent in the period from 1 January to 31 August 2010. Capacity utilisation in mechanical engineering also went up, climbing from 69.2 percent in July 2009 to 84.5 percent in October 2010.