SURVEY OF THE EUROPEAN MANUFACTURERS OF TOWED AGRICULTURAL VEHICLES AND MACHINERY AND THEIR MARKET

摘要

Trailed machinery and transporters with various types of suspension account for a large proportion of the manufacture and sale of agricultural machinery in Europe. These trailed vehicles cover a wide functional range: agricultural trailers, tanker trailers, trailed fertilisers and manure spreaders, sprayers and fodder mixing wagons. They also have many different types of suspension: tandem, tridem, sprung, rigid, steered, etc. To our knowledge, there are no continental statistical surveys regarding the distribution of this machinery, its market and the manufacturers involved, and neither are national statistics available in every case. In an attempt to fill this gap, we put questions to the agricultural machinery manufacturers and traders of each country to find answers to our questions, but our enquiries were only partially successful. This prompted us to take a new approach, using data available on exhibitors at the four largest European agricultural exhibitions to survey the number of European makers and users of suspensions, their capacities, and where possible, their market shares. Here we present the results of systematically gathering data from each exhibitor's internet catalogue and carrying out analysis and data processing over a period of several months.