Access50 reveals rental growth

Access International’s annual Access50 listing of the world’s biggest powered access rental companies, measured by fleet size, demonstrates overall growth in the sector.

Looking at the top 50 fleet sizes added together this year’s figure is up 2.7% on last year at 523767 units. This reflects a steady increase from a majority of the established companies in the table; there are also a couple of notable new entries in the top 50. One of them, Modern Access & Scaffolding, based in Hong Kong, has one of the biggest access fleets in Asia at 3510 units. A new Australian company has also made it into the top 50 this year; Alfasi Hire has a fleet of 2000 units and also operates in Hong Kong.

They represent a number of new entries from Asia which fall just outside of the top 50. Shanghai Horizon appears in 51st place, and is the biggest AWP rental company in China. In 58th position is Tayeou Kao Kong Enterprise. It is based in Taiwan and has a fleet of 1300 machines. It goes to show that Asia is developing its AWP sector at a good rate and it means we will be seeing many more companies from the continent taking part in the list in the years to come. There are also new representative from South America, South Africa and Turkey in this year’s listing.

Adding the fleets of the top five companies together, there is a slight decrease of 2.1% overall. This is mainly due to first placed United Rentals’ 8.5% smaller fleet size, compared to the 2014 list. The other companies in the top 5 have made up much of the ground, although Lavendon Group has also seen a slight drop of 3.3%.

Outside the top 5 and through the top 20 there is almost unbroken growth among the entries. Just outside the top 20, at 22, is Japan based Kanamoto with an impressive 36.6% fleet growth over last year - it tops our chart of the biggest growing companies of 2015. It reflects good fortunes among the Japanese entries this year. Nikken Corp has jumped up one place from fifth in 2014, to fourth this year, and Aktio Corp has also made a good showing.

Telehandlers have been included for the second time this year and continue to make interesting reading. Again, it is the USA-based companies that dominate in the top five for telehandlers, although Loxam, in 10th place in the main AWP list, sneaks in there at third place. Outside the top 5, the list is rich with European companies, and across the board there is a general trend for companies’ telehandler fleets to go up and down at pretty much the same percentage rate as their AWP fleets.

See the full table in the July/August issue of the magazine, just published, by downloading it from the Access International website www.khl.com/ai