Recent commercial vehicle news articles have revealed that new registrations in the EU in the final month of 2011 amounted to 166,739 units, or 7.5% more than in the same month in 2010.
It appears that France is the country that uses the most vans, remaining as the largest market in the EU with 482,823 newly registered commercial vehicles and an expansion of 5.6% in 2011. Just behind the French is Germany with 334,822 new units registered – so I say ‘just’ but in all honesty they are substantially behind France in terms of the number of units sold.
And here in the UK there were 306,488 new commercial vehicles registered which represents a growth in 2011 of 17.6%. That is a significantly larger number of van insurance policies that would have been taken out on new models last year.
Booming Markets
It would seem that these particular markets are currently booming. The fact that France and Germany have seen the highest growth over the previous year could be related to the fact that their economy has remained relatively resilient in comparison to, for example, the Italian and Spanish economy. To back this up, the Italian and Spanish markets both contracted by -3.4% and -6.6% respectively. There’s no surprise there when considering the state of both countries’ economies.
The UK has also struggled…
However, our economy here in the UK has taken quite a battering too in recent times, yet the van market continues to grow. This could perhaps be because more and more people, in such difficult financial times, have taken to courier jobs and general tradesman jobs. Many firms may also have purchased fleets of vehicles in order to broaden their services in order to attempt to see further returns on such investments.
Furthermore, because of the Low Emission Zone coming into force at the start of this year, many firms will have looked to buy new vans throughout the course of 2011. Also, during economic difficulties, many small businesses may well have prospered as more people look to save money by hunting around for high quality, yet reasonably priced, tradesmen and other general services, this could therefore, in turn, lead to a booming commercial vehicle market as the aforementioned tradesmen are able to expand their business.
Have you, or your business, prospered during the financial difficulties? And were you one of the many that bought a new van last year?