LONDON (MktNews) - UK turnover in metalworking machine tools, which includes powered industrial and personal hand tools, rose a seasonally adjusted 6.6% in the three months to December versus the previous three months and was up 16.8% on the year-earlier period, official figures showed Monday.
The quarterly increase was due to a rise of 13.9% in export turnover which was partly offset by a 1.2% fall in home turnover.
Compared with the same period a year ago, export turnover rose by 32.1% while home turnover was only up 2.4%.
Total orders on hand for machine tools at the end of December were 3.3% higher than the level at the end of September, and up 44.4% on December 1999.