Annual meeting of the industry took place in the first half of December, in the seat of the Ministry for the Economy, and for some time now the Ministry for Development. The Ministry for Development was represented by Tadeusz Kościński who emphasised the importance of the automotive industry for the whole economy of the country, and announced activities of the government which are aimed at increasing innovativeness in this sector.
The conference was used to summarize the situation of the independent automotive aftermarket in Poland and in Europe, as well as to discuss the challenges which the sector has to face.
The total value of the European independent automotive aftermarket is estimated at around EUR 120bn a year, with 82bn in production of spare parts, tyres and accessories. Of 490k European garages, 370k are independent ones. They are being served by 46 thousand companies dealing in selling parts.
Above data prove that Europeans highly appreciate independent garages. According to majority of respondents they are no different from authorized carmaker garages as regards quality and standards of offered services, whilst regarding price competitiveness they are far ahead. - This is also noticed by car manufacturers who are trying to fight for the customers using aggressive marketing policy. They do not hesitate to disavow independent competition – said Robert Kierzek.
The summary of the automotive market in Poland shows a growing importance of manufacturing spare parts, in which Poland is a European specialist. – Value of sales last year reached PLN 63.2bn, exceeding by far the value of sales of new vehicles, estimated to have reached PLN 44.6bn. Export of spare parts in the last 10 years went up three times and is currently one of the pillars of our trade – said Alfred Franke, President of SDCM.
Besides interesting summaries, a great cognitive value had also opinion pools realized among distributors and manufacturers, who replied various questions, also those about the future. This anonymous survey allowed noticing the moods in the industry.
Panel discussions are also a fixed part of the Conference of the Independent Automotive Market. This year, the experts of the industry discussed the consequence of errors in Central Register of Vehicles, controls which are performed on entities operating on the market, on-board telematics systems and threats which are born by changes in the Traffic Law.
The last point of the conference was the finale of the contest “Garage of the Year 2015”. There were awards in three categories: small, medium and large garage.
Source:moto. wp. pl
2015-12-18
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