Manufacturing activity in Europe suffered a setback last month but Asian factories enjoyed solid momentum, offering policymakers some hope the region can weather the hit from soft Chinese demand, surveys showed yesterday.
The downturn in Europe was widespread, with Italy the only big player not to see a fall in its Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) despite manufacturers largely cutting prices.
HCOB’s final eurozone manufacturing PMI, compiled by S&P Global, fell to 45.8 last month from May’s 47.3. It has been below the 50 mark separating growth from contraction for two years.
Photo: Aly Song, Reuters
"What looks like the green shoots of recovery seem to be diminishing. We can’t take a recovery for granted," Nomura Holdings Inc economist George Moran said.
Germany’s factory sector, which accounts for about a fifth of Europe’s biggest economy, experienced a retreat, while in France the manufacturing recession deepened.
In Britain, which holds a national election on Thursday, manufacturing growth slipped last month from May’s 22-month high as ongoing disruption to shipping in the Red Sea led to lower demand from overseas customers.
A eurozone index measuring output, which feeds into a composite PMI due on Wednesday that is seen as a good gauge of economic health, sank from May’s 49.3 to a six-month low of 46.1, albeit just ahead of the 46.0 flash estimate.
A new orders index in the currency union dropped to 44.4 from 47.3, despite factories cutting prices charged for a fourteenth month.
But cost pressures weighed on manufacturers in countries like Japan, where a weak yen is boosting the price companies pay for fuel and raw material imports.
China’s Caixin/S&P Global manufacturing PMI rose to 51.8 last month from 51.7. It marked the fastest clip in more than three years and exceeded market forecasts of 51.2.
The private-sector reading followed official PMI data on Sunday showing China’s manufacturing activity fell for a second month last month and services activity slid to a five-month low.
In a sign Asia is benefiting from solid global demand, South Korea’s factory activity growth quickened last month to the fastest in 26 months on surging new orders, its PMI showed.
Factory activity also expanded last month at a faster pace than in May in Vietnam and Taiwan, other surveys showed.
Taiwan’s PMI surged to 53.2 last month, its highest reading since March 2022, while Vietnam’s PMI rose sharply to 54.7 last month from 50.3 in May, rising for a third consecutive month, S&P Global said.
Japan’s factory activity expanded last month, but at a slower pace than in May, as companies struggled with rising costs due to the weak yen.
The final au Jibun Bank Japan manufacturing PMI was 50.0, on the break-even line, after a brief improvement to 50.4 in May.
Meanwhile, activity in India’s manufacturing sector rebounded last month as output increased on robust demand, leading to the fastest rate of hiring in over 19 years.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
RSS