A decline in construction machine sales for 2024?

According to Off-Highway Research, the global construction equipment market is expected to fall 8% in 2024 to 1.08 million units, following the 7% decline of 2023 and 6% drop in 2022. Although three consecutive years of declines are bad news, this fall is from the high volume of machines sold in 2021. The bottom of the cycle in 2024 and 2025 will be on a par with the recent ‘normal’ peak in 2019.

Off-Highway Research sees this drop as a correction back to normal conditions, rather than being a serious problem with the market or the factors that drive it.

in a cyclical market like the construction equipment industry, downturns normally come with double-digit percentage falls in year-on-year equipment sales. Three years of single digit declines classify the current readjustment as a soft landing.

Sales are expected to pick up across all regions from the mid-2020s onwards and the long-term growth trend for the industry should mean that the high volumes achieved in 2021 might be regained towards the end of the decade as part of normal and sustainable cyclical growth.