The farm machinery industry is upbeat about future sales in Europe: the general business climate continued to rise sharply in February, turning into the positive for the first time in 2 years. Total volume of orders is as high as it was last in 2013. With 40% of manufacturers expecting a higher turnover within the next six months, optimism is definitely back.
While future expectations turned positive across all segments, the current situation has improved particularly for edge segments (where more than 70% of the manufacturers expect a higher turnover) and remains weak for livestock equipment.
The main reason for the upswing lies in Europe itself. After incoming orders had mainly been driven by exports to countries outside of the EU in the past months, order intake from EU markets have now increased significantly in January. As a result, turnover expectations are much brighter for Europe, with improvements observed across all markets – with the notable exception of Belgium, where last year´s agricultural income losses (-12) exert a negative impact.
Even for France a slight majority of survey participants now expects a turnover increase for the next six months – though, still, the French market remains at the bottom of the country ranking.
Spain continued to head the country ranking, followed by the UK – a result driven mostly by the enthusiastic expectations of companies that are producing locally in the country: nearly all British and Spanish dealers expect their turnover and order intake to increase.
