FRANKFURT – Germany’s printed circuit board sales in August decreased 1.5% year-over-year, says ZVEI.

The figure was also nearly 4% below the average for the last 10 years, the firm says.

Incoming orders for August were down 12.4% year-over-year. However, incoming orders for the first eight months of 2013 were flat with the same period last year.

The book-to-bill ratio in August was 0.89.

The number of employees in the German PCB industry was 4.5% lower than August 2012, mainly driven by the closure of a multinational company, ZVEI says.