According to Statistics Canada, Canadian manufacturing sales increased 0.8 percent to $71.5 billion in November, on elevated sales in 13 of 21 subsectors, mainly driven by higher sales of petroleum and coal (+2.6 percent) as well as aerospace (+9.3 percent) products. Meanwhile, sales of motor vehicle parts (-3.7 percent) recorded the largest decline.
Total inventories increased 0.3 percent to $120.0 billion in November. Higher goods in process (+0.5 percent) and raw materials (-0.6 percent) inventories largely contributed to the increase in November. From an industry perspective, higher inventories of primary metals (+3.8 percent) and petroleum and coal products (+4.1 percent) were mainly responsible for the increase. Total inventories in constant dollars were unchanged in November.
The inventory-to-sales ratio fell from 1.69 in October to 1.68 in November. This ratio measures the time, in months, that would be required to exhaust inventories if sales were to remain at their current level.
The total value of unfilled orders rose 0.3 percent to $104.7 billion in November, largely on a 3.2 percent increase in unfilled orders of machinery and a 4.8 percent increase in unfilled orders of fabricated metals.
The capacity utilization rate (not seasonally adjusted) for the total manufacturing sector increased from 80.4 percent in October to 79.6 percent in November.
Capacity utilization rates decreased in the machinery (-3.6 percentage points), transportation equipment (-0.8 percentage points) and non-metallic minerals (-5.7 percentage points) subsectors. The losses were partly offset by higher capacity utilization rates in the primary metal (+0.9 percentage points) and petroleum and coal product (+0.4 percentage points) subsectors.