A3 govt vice chairman Alex Shikany talking at Collaborate North America 2025. | Credit score: Brianna Wessling, The Robotic Report
Whereas 2024 was a sluggish yr for the robotics trade, the Affiliation for Advancing Automation (A3) is extra optimistic about 2025.
After a sluggish first three quarters of the yr, A3’s newest robotics statistics present a powerful ending to 2024. North American firms ordered 8,277 robots valued at $506 million in This autumn, reflecting 8% progress in each items and income in comparison with This autumn 2023. Meals and shopper items led the quarter with 77% year-over-year progress, pushed by seasonal demand and continued funding in automation, A3 mentioned.
“There’s plenty of optimism and plenty of alerts proper now that 2025, and even into 2026 and 2027, being sturdy years for automation,” Alex Shikany, govt vice chairman of A3, informed The Robotic Report final week at Collaborate North America 2025.
General, North American firms ordered 31,311 robots valued at $1.963 billion, representing slight will increase of 0.5% in items and 0.1% in income over 2023.
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What’s occurring within the automotive trade?
Regardless of This autumn’s beneficial properties, robotic gross sales within the automotive trade remained sluggish. Whereas historically a powerful supporter of robotics, automotive orders declined 15% in 2024 in comparison with 2023, in line with A3. Nonetheless, Shikany believes automotive orders will bounce again by the tip of 2025.
“I feel there’s room to develop in automotive,” he mentioned. “What we noticed over the past two years, with the decrease portions of orders, had much more to do with producers pivoting their methods with regard to not getting the efficiency they thought they’d get out of all their electrical ambitions.”
Many automotive firms guess on customers shopping for electrical automobiles (EVs) in droves. Nonetheless, EV adoption has been slower than anticipated for a lot of automakers.
“What I’m seeing and listening to now could be that there’s a wave coming from the automotive trade, and it hasn’t hit shore but,” Shikany mentioned.
“The automotive trade is a mature market relative to robotics. It’s been round a very long time, and they don’t seem to be strangers to deploying robots,” he continued. “However they typically have to retool their meeting and manufacturing traces to accommodate new automobiles and issues.”
Meals & shopper items, life sciences drive progress
North American robotic orders have fallen lately however remained principally regular in 2024. | Supply: A3
Meals and shopper items emerged as 2024’s fastest-growing sector, with robotic orders surging 65%. Life sciences, prescription drugs, and biomedical have been different industries that posted sturdy outcomes with 46% progress in orders.
Shikany mentioned the largest areas of progress for robotics within the years to return can be in consumer-driven industries, together with warehousing, agriculture, and development. Folks will at all times want meals and housing, they usually seemingly gained’t cease procuring on-line any time quickly.
“You see a bunch of malls closing everywhere in the United States,” he mentioned. “Gone are the times when brick and mortar have been the way in which that you simply get your procuring executed.”
Different sectors, like semiconductors and electrics, didn’t have a powerful finish to 2024. Semiconductor and electronics orders fell by 37% yearly, reflecting provide chain pressures and cooling demand, whereas metals noticed a 4% decline.
Geographically in the US, Shikany mentioned he sees plenty of robotics potential within the Midwest and Rust Belt. “There’s only a various vary of industries with a excessive density of firms on this space of the nation,” he mentioned. “Should you take a look at their adoption of our applied sciences, they’re at a comparatively low fee in comparison with what the alternatives are.”
Constraints shifting ahead
Shikany mentioned 2025, significantly the second half, can be constructive for robotics. However, in fact, there are nonetheless issues to be cautious of. For instance, small and medium-sized enterprises nonetheless typically see robotics as too difficult to implement.
“Some firms consider that robotics automation is an excessive amount of to chunk off, so to talk. We don’t have to automate [in the U.S.], we will proceed to do enterprise we’ve at all times executed it and be simply fantastic,” he mentioned. “However that’s turning into much less true by the day, as extra firms the world over are adopting these applied sciences.”
Moreover, some staff nonetheless see robotics as competitors or a menace to their jobs.
“Time and time once more, we’ve got documented that with many firms, the precise reverse occurs,” he mentioned. “Staff have extra satisfaction of their jobs and their work once they get to work with upgraded tech.”
“Robots are going to be working alongside folks for a few years to return,” Shikany mentioned. “I feel you’ll finally see ‘lights out’ amenities achieved, however frankly, I consider that’s going to require a ground-up imaginative and prescient, the place each step of the method from planning that facility by means of designing it has all the mandatory expertise prepared for it.”
Shikany warns that firms that don’t automate run the danger of falling behind.
“Should you’re sitting there, and also you’re saying to your self, it’s too advanced, it’s too expansive, you’re going to be left behind,” he mentioned. “Or, your competitors goes to be the one which finally ends up adopting it, and also you’re going to be at an obstacle.”
A3 president Jeff Burnstein lately wrote an open letter to the Trump administration that mentioned automation is vital to reshoring manufacturing to the U.S. He beneficial that the federal authorities work with the robotics trade to develop a technique to successfully compete economically and in nationwide safety.
