Room to grow for skid-steers

摘要

Over the past 10 years, sales of skid-steer loaders have been growing at an unprecedented pace. Sales in North America, the world's largest market, increased from about 25000 units to a peak of 71 000 units during that time. The slowing economy in 2001 caused skid-steer sales to decline modestly, although not as much as some had expected considering the declines of some other small machines. We had projected sales would be down about 15% from the peak achieved in 2000, but the actual results for 2001 were closer to 10% below the previous year's results, with final sales in the mid-60 000 range. Markets outside North America have not been very important for skid-steers, as unit volumes have been scarce for the most part. other than in Europe. Sales in Europe have grown an average of about seven percent annually to over 12000 units, up from about 9000 units in the mid-90s. The biggest single markets include Italy. Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom in that order, with these five countries accounting for about 80% of the total market in that region. Italy represents about one-third of the European total by itself, while Spain accounts for another 17%. In Latin America, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico are the three largest single markets, each with sales of about 400 to 500 units annually, while all other countries are generally under 100 to 200 units per year at best, even in good years. Argentina's current market is very weak because of the economic chaos in that country. so it too would be considered one of the smaller markets. Overall, the Latin market accounts for an estimated 2000 to 2500 units annually.