Aerospace
After a two-year pause, Boeing resumed deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner after recertification. This helped take Boeing total aircraft deliveries to 35 in August from 26 in July and from 22 in August last year. It also reported 26 new orders in August, half of them for its 737 MAX jumbo jet.
Boeing KC-46 tanker. Image: Boeing
In other news, the US Air Force has cleared the Boeing-made air-refuelling tanker KC-46 Pegasus to operate on all its military missions worldwide. USAF ordered 15 more KC-46 tankers from Boeing under a $2.2bn order. The military transport plant is modelled on the Boeing 767 passenger jet.
Source: Airbus, Boeing
Meanwhile Airbus delivered 39 aircraft to 22 customers in the month of August, driven by its single-aisle models. Although it booked no new orders in August, at 637 net orders and 382 deliveries in the first eight months of the year, it still outpaced Boeing’s 388 orders and 277 deliveries respectively in the same period.
Automotive
China’s new energy vehicles production more than doubled year-on-year in August, rising by almost 120% to 691,000 passenger and commercial vehicles in total, and was up 12% on the preceding month according to China Automobile Manufacturers Association (CAAM). This was driven by petrol-hybrid (up 175.5% y-o-y) and battery electric (108.6%) cars and battery-powered commercial vehicles (up 98% y-o-y) , while production of petrol-hybrid CV’s declined 9.7% y-o-y. In total, in the fist eight months of the year, China produced 3.97m new energy vehicles, up 118.1% on the same period in 2021.
Source: CAAM
Across all fuel types, China produced 239,500 passenger cars (up 38.3% y-o-y) and 23,800 commercial vehicles (up 3.1% y-o-y) in August, bringing its total vehicle output to 16.97m in January-August 2022, 4.8% up on the same period last year.
China’s vehicle sales dipped by 1.5% in August compared with July, totalling just over 2.38m vehicles because of lower (-2.3%) passenger car sales, but were still up 32% y-o-y. Passenger car sales for January-August were just below 14.65m, up 11.7% y-o-y. New energy vehicles accounted for 637,000 of this (including 493,000 battery electric cars), up 115.8% y-o-y, far outpacing the growth for traditional fuel types.
In August, the European new car market finally returned to growth, rising by 4.4% y-o-y in the EU after a 10.4% drop in July, according to automotive manufacturers association ACEA. This brought an end to thirteen months of consecutive decline. However – with 650,291 units registered in the EU – this result remains far below pre-pandemic levels, ACEA noted. Outside the EU, the UK recorded a 1.2% growth in August, while car sales in Norway fell by 24.7%. For the EU + EFTA +UK European region, car sales rose by 3.4% y-o-y to 748,875 in August, bringing the total for the first eight months of the year to 7.22 million, still 11.8% down from 8.19 million in the same period of 2021.
Semiconductors
Global semiconductor industry sales totalled $49.0 billion in the month of July 2022, an increase of 7.3% on July 2021 total of $45.7 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). Compared with $50.2bn in June 2022, sales were down 2.3% however, based on monthly sales compiled by the Worls Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organisation.
Y-o-y sales increases dropped into the single digits for the first time since December 2020, noted John Neuffer, SIA president and CEO. Sales into the Americas market led with a 20.9% y-o-y rise. Elsewhere, sales were up y-o-y in the Europe (15.2%), Japan (13.1%), and Asia Pacific and all other regions (4.1%), but down in China (-1.8%). Compared with June, sales increased month-on-month in Europe (2.7%) and Japan (0.6%), but fell in the Americas (-2.3%), China (-3.5%), and Asia Pacific/All Other (-3.5%).
Oil and gas
In the last week of September, Europe was rocked by the Nord Stream pipeline that rungs under the Baltic Sea springing several leaks in Danish and Swedish territory within hours of each other. The EU blamed sabotage and linked this with escalating hostilities in Ukraine, but it stopped short of blaming Russia. The incident is only making the issue of supply security in Europe more urgent.
With the west putting in efforts to offset the loss of Russian oil and gas supply, the international rig count rose again in August, according to Baker Hughes. The global count rose by 50 rigs or 2.8% from July, led by North America and Europe. With 1,825 rigs in operation as at last count, it was also up 391 rigs or 27% y-o-y.
In Europe there were 104 rigs in operation in August, up from 87 in July, while in Canada 201 rigs were in operation, up from 186 a month earlier. US rig count rose to 764 in August from 756 in July. Rig count was up 5.5% in Latin America and 1.5% in Asia Pacific, according to Baker Hughes. The Middle East and Africa were one rig down each from July.
