-Chinese Market Began Recovering in the Second Half of 2009

One year has past since the world economic crisis broke out. There were signs showing that global material handling industry attacked heavily by the crisis began to pick up the developmental momentum in some regions since the last quarter of 2009.

According to the report: General Situation of China Domestic Industrial Truck Market in the First Half of 2009 given by Industrial Truck Institution of China Construction Machinery Association (CITA for short), the sales quantity of industrial trucks in China in the first half of 2009 was 59,431 sets, lowering 36.24% compared with the 93,632 sets in the same period of last year, and that of non-powered industrial trucks was 560,000 sets, decreasing 52.1% in the year-on-year comparison with the 1.17 million sets last year.

In the report of World Industrial Truck Statistics (WITS), Asian area totally sold 90,532 sets of industrial trucks in the first half of 2009, a year-on-year decline of 37.01%. Sales of Chinese market accounted for 52.8% of the total quantity of Asia, reaching a year-on-year increase of 8.87%, continuing to be No.1 in Asia. Referring to other continents such as Europe, the sales quantity of industrial trucks were respectively 106,530 sets, declining 50.17% compared with 213,796 sets in the same period of last year; America, 67,699 sets, declining 40.44% compared with last year’s 113,666 sets; Africa, 4756 sets, declining 41.28% and Australia, 5570 sets, declining 55.23%.

To sum up, in the first half of 2009, the sales quantity of industrial trucks in the world was totally 275,870 sets, meeting a year-on-year decrease of 44.1%.

As for Chinese market, Lu Daming, the Director-General of Industrial Truck Institution of China Construction Machinery Association (CITA for short) told the media, “due to the influence of financial crisis, the industrial truck market in China began to contract since July, 2008 and hit the bottom line till January, 2009. In February and March, the economy experienced a clear recovery and gradually developed forward from April to August. What we have seen was that the market had been moving along optimistic tendencies.”

In 2009, the total sales of industrial trucks in China decreased 36.24% during the period of January to June based on a year-on-year statistics. However, the sales decreased 28.39% during January to September, 25.76% during January to October and 21.9% during January to November. These data showed that from the second half of 2009, China’s industrial truck market had a less decreasing margin, and the sales of industrial trucks began to climb up from the down point, slowly but steadily. It was predicted that in 2009 as a whole, China would sell nearly 137,000 sets of industrial trucks, 20% less than that in 2008.

On American market, the aggregation of industrial truck delivery was 51,537 sets of industrial trucks in the first half of 2009. The superior analysts in Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA) anticipated recently that the new order-coming of material handling equipments in local America may realize some increase in 2010 while experts of this field said that the order may increase 3.5% on the basis of 2009.

On European market, we could see that in the first half of 2009, among the six key manufacturing countries of industrial trucks, German went through a year-on-year decrease of 39.81%; France declined 37.71%, Italy underwent a 47.73% downturn; Britain slipped down 57.47%; Spain dropped about 59.88% and Swede fell 34.51%. When compared with the situation in America, the superior of Fédération Européenne de la Manutention (FEM) Gordon Riske, who is also the President of Kion Group, prudently expressed his optimistic view, saying that the market of industrial trucks in Europe has gone stable from October to the end of the year. However, he also said that the development of economy was still in a low level; although the recovery had already begun several months before the end of the year, it was quite slow and would have no substantial increase until the middle period of 2010.  

On Japanese market, the delivery quantity of industrial trucks were in a total of 59,549 sets from January to October, 2009, contracting 58% compared with last year’s 143,441 sets in the same period. It was predicted that the total delivery quantity of forklifts in the whole 2009 in Japan would not exceed 75,000 sets, generally more than 50% less than the 164,164 sets in 2008. Japan would be the one influenced most heavily by the financial crisis among all the giant manufacturing countries.

Seeing from the development situation in the first half of 2009, global material handling industry had undergone the greatest strike in the history. In the last months of the year, Chinese industrial truck market had some recovery that were most obvious among these large manufacturing countries due to the effective and in-time economic incentive policies taken by Chinese government. 

Despite that the influence of financial crisis on the global material handling industry has lasted for more than one year, the key personnel in the field of industrial trucks showed their optimistic to the future. In line with their opinion, it was anticipated that in the second half of 2010, the material handling industry all around the world, except several regions, would get rid of the dilemma and realize fundamental positive development in 2011, although the industry may catch up with the highest development level after several years’ recovery.