{"id":6253,"date":"2014-05-29T15:33:18","date_gmt":"2014-05-29T15:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=6253"},"modified":"2014-05-29T15:33:18","modified_gmt":"2014-05-29T15:33:18","slug":"will-rising-european-sales-rescue-uk-commercial-vehicle-manufacturing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/6253","title":{"rendered":"Will rising European sales rescue UK commercial vehicle manufacturing?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"CV

Rolling year total CV output from 2008 – 2014 (courtesy of SMMT)<\/p><\/div>\n

As I’ve documented many times<\/a> over the last year, UK commercial vehicle manufacturing has\u00a0experiencing a relentless decline\u00a0over the last few years, not least because of the closure of the Ford\u00a0Transit plant<\/a> at Southampton.<\/p>\n

According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), commercial vehicle manufacturing fell by 27.3% in April, as restructuring changes — code for\u00a0closures and downsizing — continue to ripple through the comparative figures.<\/p>\n

In other words, last year’s changes are making this year’s figures look low.<\/em><\/p>\n

European hopes?<\/h3>\n

However,\u00a0commercial vehicle registrations across Europe have turned a corner\u00a0this year, and started to rise.<\/p>\n

EU-wide registrations of trucks, vans, buses and coaches rose by 5.1% in April and are up by 8.7% so far\u00a0this year, providing\u00a0a glimmer of\u00a0that this rise in demand might help absorb some of the lost capacity and weak orders seen in the UK manufacturing sector.<\/p>\n

Mike Hawes, the chief executive of the SMMT, believes there is some hope:<\/p>\n

“Production of commercial vehicles continues to suffer the effects of restructuring and, for the truck sector, the impact of last year’s spike in demand around new Euro-6 legislation. However, with some investments yet to be realised and eight consecutive months of growth in the European market, the outlook is more encouraging.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope Mr Hawes’ faith will be realised, but I wouldn’t suggest holding your breath; the numbers are\u00a0still pretty dire:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
CV manufacturing<\/strong><\/td>\nApr-13<\/strong><\/td>\nApr-14<\/strong><\/td>\n% Change<\/strong><\/td>\nYTD-13<\/strong><\/td>\nYTD-14<\/strong><\/td>\n% Change<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total<\/strong><\/td>\n8,623<\/strong><\/td>\n6,270<\/strong><\/td>\n-27.3%<\/strong><\/td>\n32,477<\/strong><\/td>\n25,790<\/strong><\/td>\n-20.6%<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Home<\/td>\n3,899<\/td>\n2,895<\/td>\n-25.8%<\/td>\n16,565<\/td>\n12,412<\/td>\n-25.1%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Export<\/td>\n4,724<\/td>\n3,375<\/td>\n-28.6%<\/td>\n15,912<\/td>\n13,378<\/td>\n-15.9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
% export<\/td>\n54.8%<\/td>\n53.8%<\/td>\n<\/td>\n49.0%<\/td>\n51.9%<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Data courtesy of SMMT (www.smmt.co.uk<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK commercial vehicle manufacturing fell by 27.3% in April, taking the year-to-date decline to 20.6%, despite rising new CV registrations in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[225,310],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6256,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253\/revisions\/6256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}