It seems clear to me that underlying demand is also falling.\u00a0That’s not necessarily a problem after a long period of strong demand, as Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, explains:<\/p>\n
\u201cWith fewer working days in April and following two years of exceptionally strong demand, it\u2019s not surprising to see a decline in CV output, especially when you consider the effect of fleet buying cycles on manufacturing timing. However, as the proportion built for export reaches levels not seen since the start of this decade, it highlights the importance of maintaining good links with our biggest trading partner, Europe. Securing a strong trading relationship will be vital to the continued success of UK CV manufacturing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Looking at the figures in more detail, it’s clear that it’s\u00a0weak demand in the UK which is really eating into the output of our factories:<\/p>\n
Source: SMMT<\/p><\/div>\n
UK demand almost halved in\u00a0April and has fallen by\u00a0nearly a third so far this year. That’s a hefty decline.\u00a0Although\u00a0some of this may be due to shifting fleet replacement cycles (some of which can account for\u00a0hundreds of vans in a single order), I suspect\u00a0underlying demand may have weakened somewhat.<\/p>\n
It will be interesting to see which way orders go\u00a0for the remainder of the year. If bank holidays and fleet purchasing cycles are to blame for the slump in demand, I’d expect some normalisation during the remaining\u00a0seven months of the\u00a0year.<\/p>\n
After all, it’s worth putting these figures in perspective.\u00a0Export demand is up by 12.6% so far this year and overall production\u00a0has only fallen by 8%. Looked at on a bigger scale —\u00a0from April 2009 up to April 2017 — the picture still looks fairly benign:<\/p>\n
Source: SMMT<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UK commercial vehicle manufacturing output fell by 28.3% in April. As I explain, that’s too big a fall to be explained by Easter’s shift from March to April in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[310,1885],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9877"}],"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=9877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9881,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9877\/revisions\/9881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"UK](\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/smmt-cv-output-apr17-sm.png\")
![\"CV](\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/smmt-rolling-cv-output-apr17-sm.png\")