CLEAR International has issued a new report forecasting the demand for heavy goods trailers in Western Europe to increase 14.4% this year.
At the IAA trade fair in Hannover in September, there was pessimism in the air. The trailer industry and its suppliers had had a good first half in 2014 but there was less confidence in the outlook for the last quarter and the beginning of 2015.
On top of this there has been a raft of bad economic news as the euro zone returned to low growth and even Germany just avoided a recession by growing 0.1% in 2014 Q3.
CLEAR has a different perspective, believing it is entirely normal when recovering from a recession for there to be a year of little or zero growth in the trailer market—and 2015 will be such a year. Indeed it has been part of the CLEAR forecast since 2011. Look back at the recessions of 1993, 2003 and now 2009 and the same pattern is clearly discernible.
What is more, the GDP levels in Germany, France, the UK, Belgium and many smaller economies within Europe are at an all-time record high in real terms, not to mention the USA, China etc.
Gary Beecroft, Managing Director of CLEAR added, “Trailer production, having fallen by 9.8% from the 2011 level, will also have a double digit increase in 2014. However, 10,000 trailers have been wiped from the forecast, much of it as a consequence of the conflict in Ukraine.”