Industry overview
The Other manufacturing sector across Germany comprises approximately 19,985 enterprises employing about 288,277 people and generating €47.3 bn in net turnover in 2019. The average enterprise size is – employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a healthy operating margin of 13.1% of revenue in 2019, the sector reports €6.2 bn of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
The Other manufacturing cost mix is reasonably balanced: cost of revenue at 58.5%, personnel at 28.8% and energy at – of turnover. Without a single dominant cost driver, margin management requires attention across the full operating envelope rather than focus on any one line.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2008 to 2019 the operating margin moved from 12.8% to 13.1% (+0.3 percentage points), broadly stable performance. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.