What Van? Britain's biggest and best van buyers' guide

Used van market to re-balance, says Manheim

Date: Friday, December 19, 2014

James Davies

The used van market will start to rebalance next year and return to its pre-recession state in 2016, according to remarketing company Manheim.
 
Manheim said the industry was still seeing a high number of older vans on the auction block, but said the pattern would be less evident during 2015, based on new sales data from the Society of Motor Manufactures and Traders.
 
The company has used the SMMT’s data since 2005 to produce a rolling overview of used van availability by tracking the number of vans coming into the market.
 
New van sales have risen from 186,000 in 2009 to 316,000 in 2014, and the auction house said the natural market equilibrium between age categories of vans has still not yet been achieved.
 
“Our recent analysis has shed a new light on the size of the issue. When mapping each year’s annual total new van registrations forward it is clear to see where the impact of registration shortfalls will be felt,” said James Davies, head of commercial vehicles at Manheim.
 
“Take 2009 - the 186,000 new vans registered that year become one to two year old vans in 2010, then two to three year old vans in 2011, three to four vans in 2012 and so on. That’s not to say they will be sold, but that each year’s new van volume is effectively tracking through, by age banding, adding to the overall UK van parc of 3.7 million vehicles,” said Davies.

“Our analysis indicates that de-fleet age profiles will return to a pre-recessionary pattern in 2016. This is based upon the time lag from date of registration to first life de-fleet.”