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What’s Been Happening in our MAKE│NZ Community
Last week, along with our first Fireside chat of 2026, we had our AGM. Might as well kick off the year doing it by the book, getting formalities out of the way. And a great big thank you to those who showed up early to participate in the formalization of our new constitution. As a quick run down for those who were busy trying not to be washed away by the weather and instead elected to head home, the key changes were:
- Adding “support educational research into manufacturing in New Zealand” to solidify the focus on what we’ve been doing and will continue to do
- A boost in the number of members we can have on our committee
- The adjustment of term for directors from one to two years
There were also a lot of other little adjustments, largely to keep up with the Incorporate Societies Act of 2022. Really fun stuff.
What’s important is we’re now squared away to keep doing what we do best, working with our community of manufacturers (you!)
News From The World of Manufacturing
•The Communist Manifesto, published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, starts with the following preamble: “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.” More wishful thinking than reality, as it turned out, at least for Western Europe.
Today, another spectre is haunting Europe, and again mostly Western Europe – Deindustrialisation. Nowhere is this more visible than in Germany. Whether you look at the PMI, employment data, industry turnover or investment, there is a consistent pattern of decline.
The PMI has been sitting below the 50 contraction threshold for much of 2023–2025, and only moving back above 50 (50.7) in February 2026, indicating the first expansion since mid‑2022. Most recently, the manufacturing PMI had fallen to 47.0 in December 2025 from 48.2 in November, driven by a sustained drop in export orders, and manufacturers cut employment, purchasing, and inventories, with workforce reductions at the fastest rate in six months.
Employment figures in the automotive industry, published in September 2025, showed fall of 6.3%, with 48,700 fewer employees than a year earlier. For the manufacturing sector as a whole the drop was 2.2% for the same period, or 120,200 employees.
As of early 2026, industrial production continues to face volatility. For instance, production in December 2025 dropped by 1.9% month-on-month.
Energy-intensive sectors (chemicals, steel, and glass) have been the hardest hit. Chemical production in the EU (heavily led by Germany) saw a 6% decrease in value-added terms over the decade leading to 2024.
Driven by high energy costs, there is a net outflow (Outward FDI minus Inward FDI) of investment in industry from Germany.
Behind all of these statistics, there are individuals – factory owners and their employees.
The State of Baden-Württemberg in Germany’s Southwest has been one of Germany’s manufacturing powerhouses right back to around 1830. Better known for Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Rober Bosch GmbH and the likes, early-on the State’s manufacturing sector was dominated by the textile industry, out of which grew a strong suite of machinery and equipment manufacturers for that industry.
One of these is (soon to be ‘was’) Mayer & Cie in Tailfingen, a mostly rural town in the centre of the State. Founded by his great-grandfather in 1905, the company is headed today by Benjamin Mayer and his brother, at the helm since 2014. The company was specialising on high-performing circular knitting machines like this one for the garment industry:
Now, the company is about to go out of business, with the loss of 270 jobs – a major impact on a smaller rural town like Tailfingen. Mayer & Cie used to be market leaders in premium circular knitting machines, with a global market share of between 10 and 15%. Since 2022, the company’s turnover has more than halved, from €110m to €50m, and at that level the company can no longer cover its costs, says Benjamin Mayer. Two major factors are behind the decline – fast fashion, and competition from Chinese manufacturers. ‘Fast fashion’, the trend to cheap clothing, has put huge margin pressure on garment manufacturers globally, who can’t afford the expensive machines from Germany any more.
Chinese manufacturers are today able to offer machines of similar performance and quality at well under half of what the machines from Mayer & Cie are offered for – between €16,000 to €20,000 against €65,000 to €70,000.
The textbook answer to this challenge is ‘Innovate to stay ahead of the competition’. Except that doesn’t work for today’s knitting machines that have reached high levels of technical maturity. “We simply can’t add new features and technical improvements to our machines that would justify the difference in price”, says Benjamin Mayer.
Not that this is an isolated occurrence. On 31 October last year, flat bed knitting machine specialist Stoll closed its doors in the close-by town of Reutlingen, with the loss of 280 jobs. That company had been founded by Heinrich Stoll in 1878.
•In last week’s Fireside Chat, the focus was on industrial design and the inherent conflict that often arises between design for functionality and design for manufacturing. There is another area of inherent conflict in design – aesthetics design (“for the looks”) vs design for functionality. Sometimes this is about how robust, or how practical a particular aesthetics design is. And sometimes it’s about product safety.
One recent – and prominent – example are door handles on cars. Pioneered by Tesla, some cars now have ‘concealed’ door handles that are flush with the door panels and are raised when required with the help of an electric motor, activated remotely (phone or key fob) or by touch:
Volvo have gone one step further in their latest EV model, EX60:
Apart from the aesthetic aspect – always a subjective call – the reason for these door handles is the claim of improved aerodynamic efficiency.
Now, however, there are signs the idea may have run its course already. A Bloomberg report last year quoted more than 140 incidents of passengers being trapped in Tesla cars after an accident in the USA, in some cases resulting in serious injury or death when the car caught fire. The door handles themselves remained physically undamaged, but “… become inoperative due to low battery voltage in the vehicle …” as stated by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration {NHTSA]. And on December 24, the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigations opened a formal inquiry into the matter.
In China the idea of flush door handles has recently spread throughout the design of new EV models. However, after a number of accidents, some with multiple fatalities, on January 28, 2026, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Standardization Administration of China officially approved and released the mandatory national standard “Safety Technical Requirements for Automobile Door Handles” (GB 48001-2026). Among a series of requirements in the new standard, each door (excluding the tailgate) must be equipped with an independent mechanical exterior handle, and after a collision or power failure, the doors on the non-impact side must be able to be opened manually through a mechanical structure.
New models will have to meet the standard by 1 January, 2027, while existing models will have to be redesigned to meet the new standard before 1 January, 2029. It is expected that other countries will follow the Chinese initiative.
Fun facts
•Where does all the money go?
According to a recent report by Trendeo, McKinsey in France and the French Institute de la Réindustrialisation, which captures data on investment and investment intentions of companies with more than $30m in sales, or 50 employees, the US alone accounts for almost half (44%) of these investment in value, and 26% in the number of projects. The US share almost doubled – from $404 bn to $793 bn, followed by the EU, and India. The other Asian countries, which on average had received around $265 bn per year since 2016, dropped to $131 bn in 2025. Most of the US investment was directed at projects within the country, as was the case of India.
On the other hand, 80% of China’s USD55bn investments were placed aboard, with Marocco, Hungary and Mexico being prime destinations. $19 bn (35%) was directed at EV manufacturing, with battery production in second place at $13 bn (24%). The main reason for the geographic location of investments was to avoid US and EU tariffs on products ‘Made in China’.
Within the US, there is a strong focus on AI and data centres, followed by pharmaceutical and electronics industries; the three sectors account for about 75% of all US investment in industry. However, the report also expressed doubts about investment announcement on data centres in particular, given the multiple capacity constraints data centre investors are facing when sourcing inputs for the construction and operation of these centres.
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