Why international diversification in machine safety is now essential – and Germany alone is no longer enough

---

For a long time, many companies treated Germany as a safe bet: strong industry, engineering culture, solid demand.
That picture has started to change.

In 2023 and 2024 Germany was the only G7 country with negative growth two years in a row, and current IMF and EU forecasts still place German growth at the bottom of the major economies. The industrial share of GDP remains high, but the trend is slowly downward rather than up. In short: Germany is still an important industrial base – but no longer a reliable growth engine.

This is not a one-off recession. It is the result of structural issues:

• An ageing workforce and a shrinking pool of skilled labour
• High unit labour costs compared to competitors
• Permanently higher energy costs after the loss of cheap Russian gas and the nuclear phase-out
• A car industry under massive pressure from China and the EV shift
• Years of under-investment in infrastructure and a high level of bureaucracy

Even if individual years look better or worse, there is no realistic scenario in which Germany suddenly returns to “economic miracle” mode within the next 3–5 years.

For operators and OEMs in machine safety this has a very simple implication:

Germany remains a core market and standards anchor,
but as a single future market it is objectively too risky.

Growth, new plants and additional capacity are increasingly created in Central/Eastern Europe (CEE), Southern Europe, Scandinavia, the Gulf region and parts of Asia – often with European machinery and European safety logic.

---

1. The relevant time frame: the next 3–5 years

Long-range scenarios up to 2035 are interesting for strategy slides.
In operations, the real question is:

• Where will we add capacity in the next 3–5 years?
• Where will new presses, forming lines and production cells be installed?
• Where will we decide which safety logic and interpretation of standards will apply for the next 10–20 years?

Over this horizon, Germany may stabilise.
But the dynamism comes from:

• CEE (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania)
• Spain / Portugal
• Scandinavia
• the Gulf region
• and export projects into Asia/APAC via European OEMs.

---

2. Key regions compared to Germany (3–5 year view)

Germany

• Largest installed base, complex legacy machines, strong norms culture
• Weak growth outlook, high energy and labour costs, crowded consulting market
• Still the reference market for standards, audits and internal group rules – but not the main source of new volume

CEE (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania)

• Fast growth, new plants, nearshoring from Western Europe
• Many German and Western European groups shifting capacity there
• Ideal to roll out group-wide safety standards: same logic for presses and lines in Germany and CEE

Spain / Portugal

• Solid industrial base, especially automotive suppliers and logistics
• Mixed landscape of older presses and newer automation → high retrofit potential
• Good opportunity to take entire fleets to a consistent safety level

Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland)

• Smaller market, but very future-oriented (batteries, green steel, recycling, advanced automation)
• Less about volume, more about high-end, best-practice projects that can later be reused elsewhere

Gulf region (UAE, Saudi, etc.)

• Today still smaller in absolute terms, but with very strong industrial investment programmes
• New plants, logistics hubs and energy projects are being built from scratch
• Entering now gives you a first-mover advantage: whoever helps define safety standards early is often kept on board for years

Asia/APAC

• Global growth driver for automation and robotics
• Strong local engineering and safety providers, big price spread
• For European specialists mostly attractive via OEM exports: machines built to EN standards in Europe, installed in APAC

---

3. What this means for machine safety strategies

From the point of view of a group with multiple plants, the priorities for the next 3–5 years look roughly like this:

• Germany as base, not as single pillar
  Use Germany to define your internal safety standards, documentation style and validation logic – but do not expect German plants to provide most of the growth.
• CEE as the main growth and standardisation field
  New capacity and shifted volume often go here. That is the ideal moment to implement consistent risk assessment and retrofit schemes across several countries.
• Spain / Portugal as a retrofit field
  Good mix of older and newer equipment. Structured retrofits can lift safety levels and documentation quality at the same time.
• Scandinavia & Gulf as lighthouse markets
  Scandinavia for high-tech and green-tech projects, the Gulf region as a young but fast-growing industrial cluster. Both are ideal for flagship safety projects that can set the tone for other sites.
• Asia/APAC via OEMs
  Focus on ensuring that exported European machines come with clear, EN-based safety concepts and documentation, which local teams can implement and defend in audits.

---

4. Conclusion: one country is not a strategy

Thinking about machine safety only at a national level no longer matches how industrial value chains are built.

Germany remains important – as a standards anchor, as a reference and as a home for complex legacy equipment.
But the growth of the next 3–5 years will increasingly come from CEE, Southern Europe, Scandinavia, the Gulf and selected APAC projects.

International diversification in machine safety is therefore not a luxury.
It is risk management: reducing dependence on a slow-growing market and ensuring that safety levels, documentation and interpretation of EN standards stay consistent across all sites where your machines actually run.