Project Construction Promotes Take-off of Construction Machinery Leasing Industry

The active level of engineering construction has remained at a relatively high level and major equipment manufacturers have vigorously promoted the leasing business. There are also many other factors that make it very difficult to predict the pace of development of the rental business. Even in the usual sense, the speed of development of the rental business is blind. The special markets faced by leasing companies around the world are often very complex and irregular. The following analysis of the development of construction machinery leasing industry in various countries around the world.

It is generally believed that under the background of extensive infrastructure development, the Indian engineering construction field will continue to maintain a prosperous development trend and will thus form a more mature equipment rental market. The construction machinery leasing industry in India has made substantial progress in recent years. Taking Caterpillar as an example, currently it has 12 rental stores in India. Although it is difficult to quantify the leasing market, the growth of Caterpillar leasing business is obvious. According to Caterpillar's Asia Pacific regional consultancy Wilson Hu, only about 1% of products sold by Caterpillar in India were sold to the leasing industry in 2005, and this number reached 5% in 2007. In fact, Caterpillar rental stores have been so successful that other manufacturers have begun to look at the equipment rental market in India. According to Rajiv Chaturvedi, channel management and distributor development manager of Telcon, one of India's largest equipment dealers and a joint venture company of Hitachi and Tata, “Leasing is a promising industry. Telcon has already set foot in this area and we are working on it. Make plans for further development."

However, in India, the most well-known leasing brand in the construction machinery industry is Quipo, a subsidiary of the Engineering Equipment Finance Group, SRE Group, which has total assets of more than US$125 million. Quipo is the vice president of East India operations. S. Bhattachrjya said that in 2007 the company’s total investment in the purchase of 700 equipment exceeded US$25.5 million. He described Quipo’s anticipation of the development of construction machinery leasing business in India as “radical”: “We expect the growth rate in the next two years will reach 200%.” It is obvious that the leasing industry continues to grow globally despite the growth rate. Very different.

In more mature markets, Japanese industry giants are working hard to expand their leasing business. Although the market consolidation trend continues, its growth rate is not expected to be fast. In the United Kingdom, optimistic forecasts on the prospects of the construction machinery industry indicate that the rental industry will grow at an annual rate of 4% to 7% over the next 3-4 years. The 2012 Olympic Games in the UK will surely drive the leasing industry to flourish.

The UK equipment leasing industry is experiencing a period of instability, but leasing consultant Dan Kaplan predicts that “the market will have a slight adjustment in 2008 and there will be no significant decline, and larger leasing companies will likely continue to maintain growth momentum in 2008.” The optimistic forecast of the 2008 forecast released by the joint leasing company seems to confirm this view. Although the forecast is difficult, at least the statistics of the development of the global construction machinery leasing industry is becoming more and more perfect. The American Rental Association (ARA) and Global Insight consultancy have obtained statistics on the North American rental market. At present, the European Lease Association (ERA) also followed suit and used a consulting company to count data on the rental markets of about 15 European countries. ERA has released a preliminary estimate that the overall scale of the European equipment leasing market in 2006 was approximately 21.5 billion euros, and that Global Insight has also embarked on a more detailed study.