If my eyes don’t deceive me, this is a new Vauxhall Vivaro being built at the firm’s Luton plant (image courtesy of SMMT)

One month ago, I wrote that December’s UK commercial vehicle manufacturing figures “hinted at a return to growth”.

A month later, year-on-year production is still falling, but only marginally — the double-digit percentage declines we saw last year do appear to be history, according to the latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

The number of commercial vehicles produced for the domestic market fell by just 3.7% in January, compared to the same period last year.

Although export demand continued to plummet last month, the perilous state of some eurozone economies and the weak euro, mean that there’s not much that UK manufacturers can do to resurrect their European sales: the reality is that anyone buying vehicles in the eurozone is likely to get better value if they buy a vehicle that’s made in the eurozone.

Here are last month’s manufacturing figures — the numbers to look at are those on the ‘Home’ row, which indicate manufacturing for domestic (i.e. UK) sales:

Data courtesy of SMMT (www.smmt.co.uk)

SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes is determined to paint a positive picture, too:

“The commercial vehicle sector saw manufacturing output decrease year-on-year in January, although there is still confidence in the sector. The home market for commercial vehicles has been strong in recent months and we expect a continued resurgence to help drive growth. Production is expected to ramp up on recently introduced models which will increase output.”

I think it’s fair to say that UK CV manufacturing has now stabilised — hopefully the dire collapse of recent years has now bottomed out.

It would be nice to see the surge in new van registrations feeding through (via the new Vivaro) manufacturing figures, but Vauxhall can’t be expected to prop up the entire UK CV manufacturing sector on its own, so we’ll have to hope that sales momentum continues into the year.