Wolfgang Degenhard

Competition among forklift manufacturers is so fierce that it's hard for companies to gain sufficient income from forklift sales alone, says world ranking list author Wolfgang Degenhard.

He made the comment in dhf-intralogistik magazine's publication The Market keeps moving - World Ranking List 2005/06.

He said almost all companies in the list reported profits but that did not mask the fact that competition between manufacturers was hard.

"This takes us to another trend, the increasing focus on becoming a system supplier and service provider.

"This does not only apply to large but increasingly also to smaller companies," Degenhard said.

"By now, they also supply complete solutions from a single source, starting from initial material flow planning via conceptualisation and scheduling and the construction phase to the plant operation.

"Maintenance of complete fleets, handling of client-oriented service concepts, and the acceptance of specially tailored leasing and financing services are no longer the prerogative of the large providers."

The top four forklift manufacturers, Toyota (18.67 per cent), Kion (15.73 per cent), Nacco (8.42 per cent), Jungheinrich (6.76 per cent), had nearly 50 per cent of the global market share for 2004/05.

Degenhard said manufacturers often made market share claims that did not accurately reflect reality.

To develop the market shares published in The Market keeps moving - World Ranking List 2005/06, Degenhard and his team added the turnovers of listed manufacturers with a percentage representing "undisclosed cases", based on international industry associations' estimates.

"The total calculated in this way reflects the size of the world market," Degenhard said.

He said the conventional method of determining market share involved counting the number of forklifts sold. Dhf used company turnover to reflect market share because the average prices of individual forklifts could differ by significant amounts.

Click here to view the ranking list.