First up, you may have already read today that Service Dealer Annual Conference and Awards will take place in a new venue this year. It will be held on Thursday 30 November 2023 at the Crown Plaza, Stratford-Upon-Avon, UK. You should keep this date in your diary.
The Service Dealer Conference and Awards is always a popular event for dealers and distributors around the UK and Ireland. It brings people from our industry together where notes and experiences are shared as well as meeting friends and colleagues within our sector. The highlight of the day will be the gala Dealer Of The Year Awards dinner where dealers are recognised for their contribution to the industry.
For those travelling from Ireland it is a good idea to book those flights early. If you leave it to the last minute, the flight costs could become more expensive.
More details about the conference, including the speaker line-up and how to book, will be announced very shortly.
Tractor registrations
CEMA recently released figures for agricultural tractor registrations for 2022. According to CEMA 165,000 tractors were registered across Europe. This is 8.7% less than 2021. However, 2021 was the best year for European tractor registrations for a number of years. Despite it being lower than last year, 2022 was the highest since 2017. Ireland had 3331 registrations in 2022, of which 64% were agricultural tractors. This is a decrease of 4.2% on last year’s total.
The number of tractors registered in Europe during 2022 would have probably been even higher were it not for the continuing disruption to global supply chains. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has not helped the bottlenecks in the supply of raw materials and components to manufacturers.
Concerns still remain with continuing production delays. These disruptions are causing longer than normal delays to delivery lead times for tractors. At the start of this year, companies’ order books still had over six months of a waiting list. Before the pandemic this was between two and three months. Stock levels held by dealers are also lower than normal in most European countries.
Despite these delays, demand for tractors and agricultural equipment is still steady across Europe. This has been helped by the higher prices in agricultural commodities such as wheat and dairy, which benefits the incomes of farmers. Having said that, only last week some of the larger supermarket chains are reducing their milk prices, which doesn’t help dairy farmers. However, with fuel prices steadily dropping, this should also leave more disposable income for farmers.
As we enter the busy time of year when tractors and machinery are in full swing and lawns are back to regular summer mowing, now is a good time to remind our customers about the importance of operating equipment safely. 26 work related deaths were recorded in 2022 of which farming accounted for 12 fatalities. Let’s have a safe summer.
