According to central European pallet manufacturers, the business year 2013 has got off to an unexpectedly brisk start in terms of volumes. Concerns that a general slowing in the pace of economic activity as a whole could lead to regressive demand for standard and special-purpose pallets have thus proved unfounded. Depending on the customer focus, by the middle of the month a number of individual manufacturers managed to register 10-15% higher volumes in sales than in the same month of last year. Both the food and consumer-goods sectors currently have a higher intake. There are reports of mixed demand from the machine-engineering and automotive sectors where demand for pallets is evidently highly dependent on the economic performance of the individual companies.