China Doubles Forklift Sales?
In preparing some headlines for wikiMHEDA today, I came across an interesting story from the Chinese website peopledaily.com. It is the online home of People’s Daily Online, whose tagline says, “Launched in January 1998, People’s Daily Online is a website built by People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China.” I say that to pre-emptively say that I’m not sure how reliable the information I’m about to share is. China is not known for its open journalism.
That being said, the facts stated in the story are interesting and may have some impact on industrial truck distributors and suppliers in the United States. The lead of the article states, “Forklift sales in China more than doubled in the first half of the year and are poised for further growth in the full year, industry experts said on Monday [July 19]. China will continue to lead the global market and the gap with US, the next biggest player, is set to widen further, they said.
“During the first six months of the year, domestic forklift sales rose across the 90,000-unit barrier, up nearly 113 percent from a year earlier.”
Two things strike me about this. One, that’s a hefty boost in sales. The article says it’s “forklift sales in China,” but it’s not clear if that figure accounts for only Chinese-made forklifts or imports into China as well. Either way, that’s a pretty quick recovery and upward trend.
Second, it says the gap between China and the U.S. is expected to widen. While that doesn’t come as much of a surprise at this point, I’m hoping that is not the case. Here’s wishing that our domestic industry can rebound quickly enough to remain competitive, at home and abroad. Any thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from someone with more knowledge on the situation.
This is the second case of material handling in China I’ve written about in the last week. Check out the newly improved website for The MHEDA Journal and an article discussing the antidumping duty saga regarding wire decks.
Tags: economy, forklift, lift trucks, material handling
