Russia’s Comtrans Show Reflects Improving Truck Market
Russia’s Comtrans exhibition is held every other year. Photo: Sven-Erik Lindstrand
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Russia’s Comtrans exhibition is held every other year. Photo: Sven-Erik Lindstrand
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Russia’s Comtrans, the largest truck and transportation exhibition in Europe this year, showed nearly everything offered on the Russian market for five days earlier this month in Moscow.
The event took place at Moscow’s most modern exhibition place, the Crocus Exhibition Center, which was completed just 10 years ago.
The Russian truck market fully follows the economy of the country. Much depends on world market prices for oil and gas, which is the country’s most important source of export and revenue. After two weak years, the truck market has now stabilized, and the Russian market is making a comeback this year with increased volumes.
This was clearly evident at the Comtrans exhibition, which is held every other year. This was the 14th time the exhibition was organized. The exhibition space of 40,000 square meters was 5% more than the last show in 2015.
The Russian Truck Market at a Glance
There are just over 8 million commercial vehicles registered in Russia. Since 2009, the number has increased by over 13%, or almost 1 million vehicles. Over half of these were manufactured before 2002. Thus, every other commercial vehicle in Russia is over 15 years old. Of these 8 million vehicles, about 50% are light trucks, about 45% are medium-heavy and heavy trucks and about 5% are tourist and city buses. After all-time high sales in 2012, the market fell dramatically and reached its bottom in 2015, which was as low as the crisis year 2009.
In January to July 2017, 31,100 trucks were manufactured in Russia, which is 47% more than in the same period last year.
The heavy truck market in Russia consists of 70% domestic brands such as Kamaz, Ural and GAZ. This also includes the Belarusian MAZ from Minsk. 10% consists of the Asian …Read the rest of this story
