Optimism for 2016 German rental market

German rental association the Bundesverbandes der Baumaschinen-, Baugeräte- und Industriemaschinen (BBI) said 2015 had been a generally positive year for rental companies and dealerships with rental operations, with further growth on the cards for this year.

The BBI’s market survey revealed that German dealers and rental companies ended 2015 with an increase in sales. But despite the growth, it said 2015 had seen contractors purchase more equipment in Germany rather than rent – it said this was due to continued favourable financing conditions for new equipment purchases and mild weather throughout the year, allowing customers to continuously utilise their own machine capacity.

The forklift truck sector saw the highest growth in 2015 in terms of sales and rentals. The BBI pointed out that there were customers in every industry for these machines, making the sector less dependent on pure construction activity.

The BBI said German forklift truck dealers recorded new machine sales increases of 5% and rental companies recorded a 6% increase in forklift rental revenues.

Another strong sector in 2015 was aerial work platforms – an industry which also does not depend on one particular sector for growth. Aerial work platform rental revenues saw a 3.5% increase last year compared to 2014, according to the BBI. It added that rental companies had also invested a lot on the modernisation and expansion of their aerial work platform fleets last year

Meanwhile, general construction equipment dealers registered a 2% increase in revenues year-on-year according to the BBI’s survey, while rental companies saw an increase of 1.5%.

Overall, BBI said the sectors it monitors produced turnover of €10 billion in 2015, mainly driven by growth in the country’s residential construction sector.

For 2016, the BBI said the companies it surveyed were optimistic and expected positive developments to continue, thanks to strong market fundamentals.

The forklift truck market was expected to see a year-on-year increase of 4.5%, while aerial work platform revenues were forecast to increase 3% and general equipment dealer and rental revenues were expected to increase 2%.