OT: The economy

[curlyandshemp]

Have any of you who are integrators noticed that no one is spending on capital projects?

Our company is a $2-3 million a year PLC & HMI integrator/panel shop/electrical house. Our sales guys have gone crazy quoting large projects ( for us anyway ) such as $200K - $500K, but none are landing. I am beginning to get the feeling , that even though our customers have project approval, they are having difficulty acquiring the funding.

 

[LJBMatt]

It depends on the industry that I've seen. A lot of purse strings have tightened or closed specifically in the private sector. Projects already in the works are still going forward as well as funding for municipal, federal, and commercial jobs. Most domestic autos are suffering severe slowdowns which is really no surprise. Business in transplant autos and suppliers still seems to be holding up at this point.

 

[robertmee]

Knocking on wood, I'm pretty busy right now. I don't know if I'm in the cycle of companies spending pre-approved capital, or if my industry isn't suffering (yet) as much (building products). But right now, I have enough on the books to carry me through 2009.

 

[MartB]

We're in the Bakery business and what I'm seeing (apart from normal seasonal changes) is that most of our work in the early part of next year is going to be overseas.
Domestically I think all of our current customers are in the 'cutting back' phase of things and are only ordering our smaller unit machines.

 

[curlyandshemp]

we are in food, beverage, dairy and some pharmaceutical which are all basically recession proof. During the last recession in the early '90s, we were busy.

 

[jstolaruk]

Auto related special machine builders here and we have a healthy backlog. Always happens when sales are way down for the automotive, they start pumping money into the machines and tooling that will produce the cars in 2-3 years when sales "recover". I've experienced this same cyclical thing 5-6 times in my career.