The 2020 leader board, courtesy of DHF

There has been little change in the Top 10 forklift manufacturers list for 2019/20.

A report by German magazine DHF shows Toyota still at the top of the ranking, with 26.82% of the global market. KION remains in second place, with 14.59%, followed by Jungheinrich with 9.28%.

The minor changes in the ranking include Manitou and Kalmar, seventh and eighth, respectively, which switched positions from last year. Similarly, Clark and Doosan (11th and 12th) have traded places in the latest listing.

According to analysis by report author Jurgen Warmbold, incoming orders for the 2019 year dropped from 1,537,979 (2018) to 1,506,876 units - the first drop after six years of growth.

For Europe, WITS has reported a decrease of 33,512 to 490,551 industrial truck orders, with Western Europe falling by 6.7%. In Eastern Europe, the fall was slightly smaller (5.6%).

In America, order volumes fell 6.7%. The North American market experienced the biggest drop at 7.9%.

Asia bucked the trend, with orders rising 4.9%. "A noticeable contribution to this was made by China, which has come from approximately 436,000 industrial trucks (2018) to 473,000 units (2019), thereby growing by 8.5%," DHF reports.

Africa and Australia/Oceania was the biggest loser and recorded a decline of 12.5%.