The sister site Skogsforum.se keeps track on the Swedish market for forwarders. This is possible as forwarders in Sweden are registered as street vehicles (just like cars etc.) by the traffic authorities*. The Swedish market reflects the World market quite well, which make the Swedish figures interesting.
The forwarder market is still good – but there are exceptions
Each quarter, Skogsforum.se receives statistics on registered forwarders in Sweden from The Swedish Transport Agency. We refer to those statistics also here at NordicWoodJournal.com. Last time was on 23rd of April this year.
The figures for the first six months 2021 look a lot like the figures for 2020 which was a record year for forwarder sales. There are however, mainly two, differences, two trends of which one has been going on for a while as the other one is connected to hard negotiations between contractors and forest companies in some regions of Sweden. More on that below.
Small changes in market shares
The changes in market shares between the manufacturers are small. John Deere is still dominating the Swedish market and has even increased their share a little bit during the first six months of 2021. Almost every other new forwarder that is sold in Sweden is a John Deere today.
2020 was a very strong year for forwarder sales. In Sweden alone, 451 new forwarders were sold which might be the highest figure ever for one single year. So far this year the figures looks the same as in 2020 but we must bear in mind that the end of 2020 was very strong. We will see if this year turns out the same way.
Declining market in one region
When looking at the market in Sweden over time, the sales of forwarders by region has been quite stable. Q2 in 2021 seem to be an exception from that rule as one region shows a clearly declining market.
In this region, Svealand, hard price negotiations have been going on between forest contractors and forest companies. The result has been lower price levels for the contractors which has led to cancelled machine orders and less sales of new machines. The delivery times are still long, but a qualified guess is that the declined sales is an effect of deteriorating conditions for the forest contractors.
More forwarders and more small ones
A clear trend the last few years, is that the mid-sized forwarders are losing their popularity. Instead, more of both small and large forwarders are sold. Especially the large ones (18 tones+) have increased their market share by 40 % between 2017 and 2021. Over one third, 35 %, of the sold new forwarders in Sweden have a payload of over 18 tons. The bestseller is John 1910G.
At the other end of the weight scale there is an increase in sales for forwarders up to 11 tons. This segment has increased by 36 % since 2017. The dominating models in this segment are Rottne F11D, John Deere 1010G and Eco Log 1050 F (the former Gremo 1050F).
Photo: Rottne.com
New market leader
No 1 in the top 10 list over sold forwarders in Sweden has been John Deere 1510G a long time. Now, however, the big brother John Deere 1910G has taken over the top position.
Photo: Deere.se
The variation of sold forwarders so far this year has been big. 32 different models (in Sweden) from the 8 tons Eco Log 750F to the 20-tonner Tigercat 1075C.
* In Sweden, all forwarders are registered by the authority Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen). As the Swedish market for CTL-machines is the largest market in the World (2020), those figures give a fairly good picture of the total market for CTL-machines. The harvesters are, however, not registered by the Transport Agency, but the number of manufactured harvesters follows the number of forwarders in most cases.
