Despite continued weakness in investment in mining equipment and projects, Metso believes that demand seems to be bottoming out, the company said in its Q1 results statement, calling this a “positive development”. Meanwhile, demand for its mining services continued to be strong.
Orders received by Metso’s mining and construction business segments in Q1 were down 21% year-on-year to € 624 million. Within this, orders from the company’s mining customers were down 29%. More positively, there were no major order cancellations or postponements during the period. Overall operating profit was € 64 million.
Services order intake declined 12% year-on-year but still accounted for 66% of the segment’s orders received.
The order backlog in mining and construction at the end of March was € 1.5 billion, was 3% lower than at the end of 2013. The company expects 81% of the order backlog to be this year.
Adapted from press release by Jonathan Rowland