Interact Analysis’ new research report Geared Products for Mobile Applications predicts the overall market will be worth $12.2bn in 2027, growing at a revenue CAGR of 1.5% over a five-year period.
The report covers all types of geared products used in mobile applications, including axle/wheel drives, track drives, slew drives and winch drives. These types of geared products are commonly used in off-highway vehicles such as lift trucks, excavators, tractors and cranes.
From a market perspective, Asia Pacific (APAC) remains the largest region for this technology, accounting for 56.5% revenue share in 2021, while EMEA and the Americas followed behind, with 23.4% and 20.1% of the market respectively. However, the EMEA and Americas regions are estimated to have achieved double digit growth in 2022 in a large part owing to high increase of average selling prices. Both EMEA and the Americas also performed better than APAC in terms of shipment units. Out to 2027, EMEA will be the best performing region, with revenues expected to increase by 3.5% annually. APAC will register the slowest growth (0.1% per year) as a result of the sluggish construction vehicle market in China.
Axle/wheel drives were the top performing product group in 2021, accounting for 64% of total revenues. This is partly due to the strong performance of sales to the material handling sector, with this product type predicted to grow at a rate of 2% revenue CAGR over the next 5 years. The performance of track drives follows closely behind, accounting for 21% of total revenues. This is closely linked to the performance of excavators and the sales of track drives are forecast to grow by 0.5% annually out to 2027.
Sales of slew and winch drives were small in 2021 compared to that of track and axle/wheel drives, reaching around $1bn for slew and $0.6bn for winch drives. Furthermore, slew drives and winch drives will enjoy modest growth out to 2027, with CAGRs of 0.8% and 0.5% respectively. Overall, construction was the largest off-highway sector for geared products in 2021, accounting for $6.8bn of revenues. The mobile material handling segment is forecast to grow fastest with a 6.6% revenue CAGR between 2021 and 2027.
“If we analyse the competitor landscape for geared products in mobile applications, it becomes clear that off-highway OEMs play an important role by supplying 1/3 of geared products for internal use,” said Shirly Zhu, principal analyst at Interact Analysis. “Of independent gearbox vendors, European and US suppliers have the strongest market presence. For example, US based Dana and German company ZF were the top two vendors, owed to their strong performance in the axle/wheel drive market, whilst Italian gearbox vendor Bonfiglioli ranked third in 2021.”
