Ireland's manufacturing sector saw a "solid improvement" in October, with the latest Purchasing Managers' Index from Investec revealing another month of expansion.

The headline PMI was little changed in October, coming in at 53.6 versus September’s 53.8 reading. The sector has now recorded 29 successive months of expansion.

Philip O’Sullivan, chief economist at Investec Ireland, said that the indications are that manufacturing firms here remain positive on the outlook, “but perhaps not as much as they did earlier in the year when the prospects for the global economy (and, within that, emerging markets in particular) seemed stronger”.

Looking ahead, he said that given the location of where most of the country’s exports go and the recent pullback in the value of the euro, “our view is that Ireland should be more insulated from the international headwinds than most.”

New orders quickened to a three month high, with this progress at least partly credited to ongoing substantial growth in new exports.

Rising headcounts remains a feature of the survey, with October’s PMI Report showing that firms continued to increase staffing levels in response to higher output requirements. The Employment index has recorded 29 successive months of growth, although October saw the weakest increase since December 2013.

On the margin side, input costs fell for the second successive month at Irish manufacturing firms, with energy and raw materials such as metals down in price over the month. This helped to at least partly defray the impact of a further fall in output prices, the fifth successive month in which this has been the case, albeit the rate of reduction in this component was the weakest since June.