Swiss tech industry faces deepening crisis: orders and exports plummet
The situation in the Swiss tech industry is becoming more and more dire. While new orders came in increasingly sparsely in the third quarter, exports of goods and sales also fell.
The downturn that began in the first half of 2023 worsened in the third quarter, Swissmem said in a press release on Thursday. “The industrial recession has reached the tech industry,” summarized the organisation.
From July to September, incoming orders fell by 10.5% compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Over the entire first nine months, orders fell by 9.9%.
+Dark clouds on the horizon for Swiss industry
The negative development was also noticeable in sales in the third quarter. They fell by 1.5% compared to the previous year. From January to September, sales stagnated overall (-0.1%).
Goods exports from the Swiss tech industry fell by 2.5% in the first nine months of 2023. According to Swissmem, they still reached a value of CHF52.7 billion ($59.3). In the third quarter of 2023 alone, the decline in goods exports was 5.5%.
Since this year, Swissmem has been calling the industry the tech industry and no longer the MEM industry, but it basically means the same thing. The umbrella organization sees itself as a representative of the mechanical, electrical and metal industries (MEM) and related technology sectors. This includes Swissmem, for example, sensors, photonics, robotics, additive manufacturing and industrial communication technology (ICT).
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
More
Most Swiss Abroad won’t be able to vote online in 2027 federal election
More
Behind the scenes: how impactful is Switzerland’s support for political prisoners?
More
Consular protection: more and more elderly Swiss are dying abroad
More
Swiss weapons exports grew 20% in first half of 2025
More
UBS orders bankers to scale back sale of complex currency products
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.