New orders to German chemical producers fell in June by 4.2% month-on-month on a seasonally, calendar and price-adjusted basis, thus ending a five-month sequence of modest growth, provisional value data by the federal statistics office showed Tuesday.
Order activity softened across geographical areas, with domestic demand dropping 5.2% and export orders receding 3.3%. The latter included a 2.5% fall in new business from eurozone countries and a 3.8% decrease from non-euro buyers.
Orders for base chemicals were 4.4% lower than in May on a 5.5% decline on the domestic front and a 3.5% decrease in export demand, according to the preliminary data.
Across Germany's entire manufacturing sector, new order activity fell 1.7% amid weakness in the intermediate (-3.2%) and capital goods (-1%) segments.
Over the first half of the year, the value of firm chemical orders was 5.4% lower than in the previous year, with similar declines recorded in domestic (-5.5%) and foreign (-5.3%) new business.
