EU chemicals production in May was 1% lower year-on-year, extending the downtrend into the ninth consecutive month, with a 1.4% drop in eurozone countries, data from statistics agency Eurostat showed Thursday.
Compared with April, however, EU output rose 0.4%, including a 0.2% increase in the eurozone.
Among major producer countries, chemical output fell in Germany (2.3% year-on-year), Italy (3.2%) and the UK (2.5%) and rose in Spain (4.7%), France (0.6%) and the Netherlands (3.2%).
The rise from April partly reflected gains in Italy (2.2%) and Germany (0.7%), while decreases were recorded in Spain (0.9%), the UK (0.5%), France (0.3%) and the Netherlands (1.9%).
On the segment level, Eurostat's estimates indicate a 1.7% year-on-year fall in EU base chemicals output, including a 5.5% drop for primary plastics and a 2.9% decline for inorganic base chemicals, whereas output of organic base chemicals was up 2.8%.
Across the entire industrial sector, output fell 2.3% year-on-year in the EU and dropped 2.8% in the euro area as the deepening sovereign debt crisis led to sharp falls in Italy (6.9%) and Spain (6.1%) in particular.