More than a third of European manufacturers with annual revenues below €50m are operating below 70% capacity, according to a survey of manufacturing executives in France and Germany.
The finding comes from Xometry’s ‘2027 EMEA Manufacturing Outlook,‘ based on responses from 200 manufacturing executives and benchmarked against 150 executives in the US. Overall capacity utilisation was broadly similar across the two regions, at around 76% in Europe compared with 77% in the US.
But spare capacity was more concentrated among smaller European manufacturers, with 37% of companies generating less than €50m in annual revenue reporting utilisation below 70%.
The finding comes as European industry faces pressure to improve productivity while dealing with shortages of specialist engineering skills and continuing supply-chain uncertainty.
“Resilience is about choice,” said Oscar Lovera, Chief Operations Officer at Xometry. “Market conditions shift constantly, whether it’s tariffs, geopolitical moves, or capacity constraints.”
The report also examines how manufacturers are using AI to boost productivity.
Xometry found that the highest reported returns on AI investment were in activities including pricing, quoting and automated design-for-manufacturing (DFM) reviews.
French manufacturers reported a 60% return on relatively modest AI investments, compared with 41% in Germany, despite German companies reporting higher overall investment.
The findings suggest that some of the immediate applications for industrial AI are outside the production process itself, with manufacturers using the technology to assess designs, generate quotes and support decisions before work reaches the factory floor.
The survey also found that European manufacturers were raising prices at similar rates to their US counterparts, but reported fewer instances where price increases resulted in lost business.
The proportion was 11% in France and 17% in Germany, compared with 20% in the US.
Xometry said this indicated that buyers were placing greater weight on factors such as verified quality, engineering support and predictable delivery alongside price.
