Page 4 - Hub-4 Magazine Issue 63

Feature Story
Back to business
In the UK, which is the biggest market for articulated trucks in Europe followed by France and Germany, OEMs are gearing up for the major infrastructure project High Speed 2 (HS2). Serving eight of Britain’s ten largest cities, this high speed railway linking up London, the Midlands and the North is one of the most important economic regeneration projects in Britain for decades, expected to kick-start not just the construction industry but the wider economy. The government has given its approval for work to begin and, due to this project alone, the UK could see demand for articulated dump trucks rise by an additional 1,000 machines over the next few years. In the first stages of the project, articulated haulers such as our Terex Trucks TA300 and TA400
will be used for preparatory tasks and transporting materials before the main construction work can begin. This includes jobs like vegetation clearance and earthwork for tunnel portals and compound facilities.
In France, where we are expanding our distribution network and currently have four dealers – The Manu Lorraine Group, Framateq, Promatex and Griset Material – the population is returning to work and our dealers have started up their sales activities again. Looking ahead, an important project that is expected to boost the French construction sector as well as the wider economy is the Seine-Nord Europe Canal project. This will involve the construction of a 107km inland waterway link extending from France to Belgium, connecting the Seine basin north of Paris to the Rhine basin and the northern European waterway network. For the construction, 55 million m3 of earth will have to be excavated and transported. Robust and reliable dump trucks like the TA300 and TA400 are the natural choice for this task.
As construction activity has slowed down throughout Europe during the last few months, it’s not only machine sales that have decreased – the demand for machine rentals has also declined. This has had a significant impact on German rental companies – where renting accounts for 70 per cent of the market activity – as well as the Italian market.
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www.hub-4.com July/August 2020 - Issue 63