Business, Estonia, Internet, Technology

"Today, the sector is experiencing a labor shortage that is especially visible in the metal industry. High salaries caused by labor shortages eat up profits and money needs to be channeled into labor expenses rather than development," Karina Tomba, industry digitization and product development service manager at Enterprise Estonia, said in a press release. "In the future, however, those companies with efficient production will survive. This means development of processes within the company, flexibility and automation, this is the only way in which added value will increase and profitability will improve," she added.

Rait Faktum Ariko carried out a survey among 300 Estonian industrial companies, according to which half of the smaller industrial companies said they are planning to invest in making production more efficient and switch to digitized and automated processes in the next few years.

Of the microenterprises that participated in the survey, 50% had already digitized all processes or were planning to do so within the next five years. Altogether 64% of industries with up to 25 employees already had experience in digitization.

Since October of last year, industrial enterprise have been able to apply for digital diagnostics support from Enterprise Estonia. In the second half of this year, an investment support will be added with which automation processes can be carried out in reality as well.

"With the help of the new measure, it will be possible to cover half of the expenses eligible for help in the extent of up to 200,000 euros," Tomba said. "According to studies carried out in Europe, the pay-off time of investments may be along the lines of 3-4 years. As the digitization level of a company increases, the pay-off time will be reduced further," she added.

According to the Rait Faktum Ariko survey, two thirds of companies that have already started with digitization are planning to continue development in the next few years.