Most recent figures from the Agricultural Engineers Association for 2015 show that John Deere increased its market share of new tractor sales in the UK to 30.2%, up 0.7% on the previous year’s levels.

CNH has the next largest market share at 27.1%, representing a 1.7% drop on 2014 levels. New Holland and Case IH (both CNH owned) represented 18.7% and 8.4% of UK new tractor sales respectively.

AGCO slightly dropped its market share of new tractor sales to 21.3%, down 0.4%. Within AGCO’s range, Massey Ferguson dropped 0.9% to take 11.2% of new tractor sales, Fendt increased 0.4% to 6.1% and Valtra remained almost unchanged at 3.5%.

The biggest market gain in 2015 was for Kubota, up 2% to 6.7% of UK sales. Claas dropped 0.9% to 4.8% of new tractor sales.

Northern Ireland

Market breakdown figures for tractor sales in NI alone are not available, however figures released by AEA in January show that new tractor sales in NI last year increased by 3.4% to 454 units.

Across the UK as a whole, tractor sales decreased by 2.2% to 10,602 units in 2016. NI was one of the few regions to experience an increase in sales, however this is mainly down to the region starting from a low base.

In 2015, NI experienced the sharpest drop in registrations across the UK, when the number of new tractors dropped by 26.3% when compared with 2014 levels.

Other than in 2015, the 454 tractors registered last year in NI is the lowest annual number in the records made available by AEA, which cover the past 14 years. The highest number of registrations in NI in recent years was in 2007, when 1,020 tractors were registered.

Horse Power

Across the UK, the average horsepower of tractors registered in 2016 stood at 158.3hp, representing a 0.8% increase on the previous year’s average.

Most horsepower bands saw decreases in the number of tractors registered in the calendar year. However, a significant exception was the 161-200hp band, which had a 35.9% increase in sales.

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