UK industrial robot sales on the up

In fact, when it comes to annual installations of industrial robots, the International Federations of Robotics’ recently published World Robotics 2021 Industrial Robots report has the UK just sneaking into the top 15 with 2205 units; this marked an 8% rise over the previous year.

Worldwide, the report shows a record of 3 million industrial robots operating in factories around the world – an increase of 10%. Sales of new robots grew slightly at 0.5% despite the global pandemic, with 384,000 units shipped globally in 2020. This trend was dominated by the positive market developments in China, compensating for the contractions of other markets. This marks the third most successful year in history for the robotics industry, following 2018 and 2017.

Unsurprisingly Asia remains the world’s largest market for industrial robots with 71% of all newly deployed robots in 2020 being installed there. Installations for the region’s largest adopter, China, grew strongly by 20% with 168,400 units shipped – the highest number ever recorded for a single country.

Despite its economy being hard hit by the global pandemic, Japan remained the second largest market for industrial robots; even with a decline in sales of 23%, 28,653 units were installed. However, the Japanese robotics market is expected to grow by 7% in 2021 and continue to do so by 5% in 2022.

Coming in third was the USA, again with new installations slowing, this time by 8% in 2020, the second year of decline following eight years of growth, followed closely by the Republic of Korea, with a decrease of 7% to 30,506 units.

Installations in Germany, which boasts the fifth biggest market worldwide at 22,300 units, accounted for 33% of the total installations in Europe. Italy followed with 13% and France with 8%.

So, we come back to the UK. Even though industrial robot installations were up by 8% to 2205 units is to be celebrated, this still seems pitifully low to me. In the UK, the automotive industry has always been the major adopter of automation, and this remains unchanged with the sector growing by 16% to 875 units - representing 40% of the installations in the UK. More notable, however, is that the food and beverage industry almost doubled installations from 155 units in 2019 to 304 units in 2020 (+96%), a trend that can be partly attributed to Brexit-exacerbated labour shortages.

So will this upward trend in the UK continue? I certainly hope so, and the IFR seems to think this will be the case, with predicted demand for robots in the UK expected to grow strongly at two-digit percentage rates in 2021 and 2022.