The latest Contract Manufacturing Index (CMI) has shown that the subcontract market was up 61 per cent on the previous quarter, which was itself 50 per cent up on the final quarter of 2024.
The CMI is produced by sourcing specialist Qimtek and reflects the total purchasing budget for outsourced manufacturing of companies looking to place business in any given month. This represents a sample of over 4,000 companies who could be placing business that together have a purchasing budget of more than £3.4bn and a supplier base of over 7,000 companies with a verified turnover in excess of £25bn.
The baseline for the index is 100, which represents the average size of the subcontract manufacturing market between 2014 and 2018.
The CMI for the second quarter of 2025 was 103, compared with 64 for the first three months of the year. The market was also significantly up on the same quarter last year, when the CMI stood at 59.
Over the course of the second quarter the market surged in April, with the index more than doubling over the previous month. May was not quite so strong, but still healthy and positive, Qimtek found. The market then leapt ahead in June, with the index almost doubling again to end the quarter at the highest level since January 2023.
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Within the overall figure, machining accounted for 45 per cent of the market, fabrication was up 4 per cent at 50 per cent of the market, and other processes, including moulding and electronic assembly, dropped to 5 per cent of the market. There was considerable change of the split by end market compared to the previous sector.
Automotive leapt into pole position as the largest market – an astonishing 90,000 per cent jump from what had been a very low Q1. It was worth almost twice as much as Marine, the second largest market.
Surprisingly, the third place was industrial machinery, which had been the top market since the third quarter of 2021 and dropped in value by 30 per cent compared to the previous quarter. The fourth and fifth largest markets were consumer products and heavy vehicles/construction equipment.
Commenting on the figures, Qimtek owner Karl Wigart said: “It is good to see the market up on the previous quarter. It finally seems to be getting up some momentum and shrugging off potential adverse factors.
"That said, it is an uneven market. We have not had lots of new projects, but we have seen some of the larger buyers coming back to the table. We are hearing that there are more projects to come, but buyers are not sure when that will be. Hopefully this growth will continue in the next quarter.”
