Aerospace volatility evident in manufacturing output for December

The latest report on manufacturing in Canada is dominated by the aerospace and transportation equipment industries. On the one hand, manufacturing was down, but unfilled and new orders for aerospace products and parts were up strongly.

A drop in transportation equipment shipments, always a volatile sector of the economy, helped push Canada’s manufacturing sales lower  by 0.9 per cent in December, Statistics Canada reports. It was the first decrease since August 2013. Despite the decline, manufacturing sales have risen in six of the past eight months and were 2.7 per cent higher than in December 2012. Sales were down in three-quarters of the industries tracked by Statistics Canada. The lower volumes of manufactured goods sold showed as a  dollar decrease of 1.9 per cent.

unfilled-orders-statistics-canada-EDIWeekly
Unfilled orders, December, 2013. Source: Statistics Canada

The fall in transportation equipment sales, which dropped 6.1 per cent to $8.8 billion, came after a seventeen-month high reached in November 2013. The biggest drop was in the aerospace product and parts industry, but declines were widespread in the motor vehicle industries as well, including assembly, body and trailer, and parts. In Ontario, the decline in transportation equipment and primary metal industries sales pushed sales down by 0.8 per cent, to $22.8 billion. Higher sales in petroleum and coal products mostly offset the losses, Statistics Canada said. The 5.2 per cent increase in petroleum and coal was the first in three months, and pushed sales to their highest, $7.3 billion, since March 2012.

Manufacturing inventories were also down in December, again attributable to lower aerospace products and parts, machinery, fabricated metal products and petroleum and coal products. However there was strong gain unfilled orders, which rose 4.2 per cent to $74.9 billion. This continues a trend that has prevailed for twelve of the past fourteen months. The biggest gain was in the aerospace products and parts industry, where unfilled orders rose 8.5 per cent $45.5 billion. This was the largest gain in almost a year. Unfilled orders for aerospace products made up 60.7 per cent of all unfilled orders. In December 2012, by comparison, the aerospace share of unfilled orders was 50.8 per cent.

New orders also rose 4.5 per cent to $52.9 billion, mostly attributable to the aerospace product and parts industry.

Did you miss this?

Other Popular Stories

  • 7 Award winners honoured for championing ontario's environment's zero-waste, low-carbon initiatives
  • Lower Model 3 prices can't prevent Tesla's slide by 3% after deliveries fail to impress; Tesla opens orders to Europe and China
  • Utility offers customers Tesla Powerwalls as home energy storage market heats up
  • Flying car maker looking for first orders for its sports car/gyrocopter PAL-V
  • Bombardier holds update on CSeries aircraft
  • SPACE 1971 vs today: looking back on the anniversary of Apollo 14's landing on the moon; with new landings planned, how much have we advanced?
  • Wind energy group says PC bill is misguided
  • Bombardier flies new CSeries jet for first time
  • BMW unveils i3, the electric car of the future
  • Petronas defers final investment decision on BC LNG project
  • Real-time oil leak tracking with PAH sensor from Norwegian Geotechnical Institute can precisely measure hydrocarbons in water around oil wells
  • Closing GM Oshawa would cost economy billions: UNIFOR
  • Zero-emissions vehicle strategy by 2018 for Canada with major boost to zero emissions infrastructure
  • Slower growth, need for new markets challenge Canada's oil producers
  • Recycling copper wire — copper can be recycled repeatedly without loss of quality
  • NASA Studies Climate Change in Canada’s Skies
  • Industry-academic R&D cooperation to boost Ontario's aerospace sector
  • Thunder Child, the unsinkable boat? Self-righting, wavepiercing interceptor engineered to be the perfect boat for offshore patrol
  • GE expanding cold-weather jet engine facility in Winnipeg
  • NASA Plans to Send Robotic Helicopter to Mars in 2020
Scroll to Top