The utilisation of production capacity by large manufacturers was 79,3% in November 2020 compared with 81,1% in November 2019, a decrease of 1,8 percentage points.

Eight of the ten manufacturing divisions showed decreases in utilisation of production capacity in November 2020 compared with November 2019. The largest decreases were recorded in the following divisions:

• furniture and ‘other’ manufacturing (-13,7 percentage points);
• basic iron and steel, non-ferrous metal products, metal products and machinery (-3,0 percentage points);
• motor vehicles, parts and accessories and other transport equipment (-2,7 percentage points);
• petroleum, chemical products, rubber and plastic products (-1,7 percentage points); and
• food and beverages (-1,1 percentage points).

In 2020 the utilisation of production capacity was 72,3%, a decrease of 8,6 percentage points from 80,9% in 2019, mainly due to increases in ‘other reasons’ (such as downtime due to maintenance and changes in productivity) (contributing 4,9 percentage points to the change in under-utilisation) and insufficient demand (contributing 2,7 percentage points to the change in under-utilisation) – see Figure 2 and Table 1, page 17.

The largest decreases in 2020 compared with 2019 were recorded in the following divisions:

• furniture and ‘other’ manufacturing (-16,4 percentage points);
• motor vehicles, parts and accessories and other transport equipment (-14,4 percentage points);
• glass and non-metallic mineral products (-11,0 percentage points);
• electrical machinery (-10,8 percentage points);
• textiles, clothing, leather and footwear (-9,9 percentage points);
• basic iron and steel, non-ferrous metal products, metal products and machinery (-9,5 percentage points); and
• wood and wood products, paper, publishing and printing (-9,0 percentage points).