With all the doom and gloom in the media constantly bombarding us into thinking the end is nye, it’s easy to fall into a trap of thinking the world is going to stop turning. Yes, interest rates are higher than they have been for a long time but they have been artificially low for years now and who can remember the early 90’s with the interest rates at 17%!!! Inflation is ridiculously high as well but that will come down in the short to medium time. As a wise of cynic said at the start of the last recession ‘all the mega rich have sold their shares at the peak so they now need to crash the economy to buy them back cheap’. There’s probably an essence of truth in that!!!!
Here at PES we haven’t seen any signs of a slow down yet. We can’t gauge it on machinery sales as they are always up and down like a Parisian tarts pants but part sales give us a true indication of where the construction industry is as we sell them across the whole of the UK. People only buy parts when they need them to repair a machine that is working, the days of having ‘stock’ that would come in handy died when accountants started running businesses.
As the largest supplier of Thwaites, Terex, Benford and Barford parts in the UK our parts sales have remained pretty constant and if we look at like-for-like sales across this year to last not only have they increased, albeit marginally, sales at the latter end of the year have had the biggest increase and that is when the brakes have allegedly come on in the economy. Also, when you drive around Devon and I’m sure it’s the same across the UK, they are still chucking up houses like it’s going out of fashion.
Without doubt we are going to have a slowdown in the construction industry, after all we had it too good for too long but don’t let the doom mongers or the mega rich fool you into panicking and making rash decisions. If we do have a down turn, look on the bright side. All the bodgers, con-artists, fly-by-nights and bad payers are always the ones that disappear up their own backsides the first leaving the well-run, well-established companies left. The only downside to that is that when it gets better, they all re-appear!!!
Who knows what’s going to happen to the economy, I’m sure not even Rishi, Jeremy and the rest of the Government who are steering the good ship UK do (God help us) but one thing I do know, PES will still be here selling dumper parts for Thwaites, Terex, Benford and Barford and they’ll still be Yanmar TNV engines flying out the door to far flung corners of the UK.
PES, here for years and years and planning to be here for a lot longer.
