• Renault Truck Industries is predicting that UK truck prices
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will rise as the deepening recession on the Continent erodes manufacturers' profits previously used to subsidise UK operations.
Managing director Bernard Momin says: "Recession is very infectious and the disease is spreading to the European mainland. From now on there will not be enough cash to subsidise losses in the UK."
The UK truck market recession is far worse than in the rest of Europe.
Tony Clinkard, RTI's director of commercial operations, says that the rises will appear on retail price lists and that this will inevitably lead to calls for higher discounts. Some rises might simply be in the form of lower discounts.
The price of a typical 4x2 283kW (380hp) tractive unit could rise by 28%, 17-tonners by 15%, and 7.5-tonners by 26% based on current published prices. But Momin makes corn parisons which show that the price of an equivalent tractor sold in France will go up by 44%; 42% in Italy, and 35% in Germany.
He believes that price rises coupled with the continuing recession will have a further negative effect on truck sales. think the second half of 1991 will be worse than the first on the Continent and particularly in the UK. There will be almost no registrations here in July, August and September," he says. Momin is equally pessimistic in the medium term: "There is no sign of any improvement at all," he says.
Renault Truck Industries' 1990 financial results showed a £500,000 net loss; £.6.4m better than the £6.9m deficit recorded in 1989. At £71.9m, turnover was down 19%.
Momin confirms that a destocking programme and productivity improvements have removed any doubts over the future of RTI's Dunstable plant.