The trailer market in Western Europe experienced an increase of 14.8% in 2014 over the previous year, according to CLEAR International’s new report forecasting the demand for heavy goods trailers in Western Europe to 2019.
The star performers were the UK and Germany, both of which saw their markets increase by 5,000 units. Other strong performers were Spain, France and the Netherlands, where trailer demand was up by more than 2,000 units. In fact, only Italy, Norway and Denmark failed to register a double-digit percentage increase, the latter two only because they had both seen good increases in previous years.
The UK was especially interesting because as the trailer market increased by 27% to an all-time record level, the market for heavy trucks fell by 29%. This can be explained by the gross indulgence in Euro 5 emissions trucks at the end of 2013 leading a loss of truck appetite in 2014. In 2015 we can expect the situation to reverse with the trailer market falling as the demand for trucks revives.
Despite this substantial increase in trailer demand the trailer parc (fleet size) increased by fewer than 7,000 units in 2014, and two-thirds of that increase came from the UK. At current levels of new registrations the market is only just meeting the replacement level and that is not enough to grow the fleet.
The situation is not however uniform across the region. Looking at the fall in the trailer parc since the 2008 peak, the combined parcs of France, Italy and Spain have fallen by 89,000, whereas the combined parcs of the other twelve nations have increased by 48,000.
In 2015, the big 7 economies of Western Europe are all forecast to have accelerating GDP growth and higher business investment, with the sole exception of Italy, which will follow the pack in 2016.
Gary Beecroft, Managing Director of CLEAR, added, “Trailer production, having fallen by 8.7% from the 2011 level, increased by 12.9% in 2014. However, 10,000 trailers have been wiped from the forecast, much of it as a consequence of the conflict in Ukraine.”