However, the face of this industry is also changing, according to a recent survey by consulting firm Lünendonk. Many of the 37 buyers surveyed said that they intend to stop buying in their services individually and to start putting them out for tender as multiple services. The reasons they stated for this were a lack of personnel and their desire to digitalize their operations to make them more efficient. This, in turn, will have consequences for industrial service providers: The market is still dominated by a large number of regional individual providers and has a low level of maturity. The market is expected to become more professional and be a “key flexibility and efficiency instrument for Germany as an industrial location,” says Thomas Ball from Lünendonk & Hossenfelder.

The German Economic Association for Industrial Services (WVIS) estimates the market volume in Germany at more than €20 billion. The industry is multifaceted and offers a wide range of services from maintenance, inspection, repairs, and modernization through technical cleaning, plant optimization, site services, and auxiliary industrial processes.