UK consultancy Clear International is expecting the European trailer market to grow by 14.4 per cent in 2014, predicting that business confidence will return in 2015.
“Trailer production, having fallen by 9.8 per cent from the 2011 level, will also have a double digit increase in 2014,” commented Gary Beecroft, Managing Director at Clear. “However, 10,000 trailers have been wiped from the forecast, much of it as a consequence of the conflict in Ukraine.”
According to Beecroft, the market is a better state than business media suggested post-IAA. In line with Global Trailer’s evaluation, he said: “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.”
Beecroft said that GDP levels in Germany, France, the UK, Belgium and many smaller economies within Europe were at an all time record high in real terms, suggesting the recovery was near.
“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.
“The Clear thesis is that the gloom and doom of recent months has been overdone and that confidence in the economy will return in 2015, leading to substantial growth in the trailer market in 2016.”