Industrial production rose over the year to May 2017 in the European Union by 4% – with durable consumer goods (+6.8%) and capital goods (+6.1%) leading the way. All this has been achieved in a highly energy efficient way – with energy consumption rising by just 1.1%. The most successful countries were all former communist-ruled Romania (14.6%), Estonia (12.6%) and the Czech Republic (10.7%). Just two countries lost industrial production during the year – Malta (-0.7%) and the UK (-0.7%).The latter may well be yet another early sign that companies are switching operations from the UK ahead of Brexit.