Aided by a 9.8% increase in December, gross new orders of machine tools for U.S. consumption totaled just over $3 billion in 2004, 43.6% higher than the $2.089 billion total in 2003, report AMT -- the Association for Manufacturing Technology and the American Machine Tool Distributors' Association, two industry trade groups.
In December, gross new orders of machine tools for U.S. consumption totaled $314.47 million. Orders for metal-cutting machine tools were $292.04 million, up 8.8% from $268.47 million in November. Orders of metal-forming machine tools were $22.42 million, up 25.7% from November.
