FTMTA AGM

The Farm Tractor & Machinery Trade Association AGM for 2014 was held recently at the association’s premises near Naas.

The overall mood of those attending the AGM was generally positive about the market conditions facing the machinery trade. While acknowledging that the sector is still extremely challenging in which to operate, most felt that business has been better in recent times than for a number of years.

In addressing his second AGM as FTMTA president, Conor Breen of Breen’s Farm Machinery Ltd, stated that “after a difficult couple of months at the start of the year, market conditions have improved considerably and 2014, so far, has been a reasonably positive year for our industry and will probably finish as the best year that we have seen since the start of the downturn in 2008”.

The FTMTA president highlighted that “the farm machinery industry serves a weather-dependent customer base and, thankfully, the weather improved in March, after a wet three-month period. Business in the early months of the year had been quiet but, from that point, sales started to improve and new tractor registrations, the traditional benchmark of the health of our industry, rebounded from a weak start to the year to a position where we are slightly ahead of the same point in 2013.

An interesting feature of 2013 was the impact that the new split vehicle registration year had, with July seeing the second highest monthly level of tractor registrations in the year.

Should that pattern be repeated this year, which seems likely, it is hoped that new registrations will exceed 1,900 units for the first time since 2008 but this will still be a challenging market size for our industry and FTMTA member firms.