Chinese brands have finally captured the Russian truck market – now they account for more than half of the market, while it may continue to grow in the near future. Kommersant writes about this with reference to the data of the Avtostat company and market experts.
At the end of January 2023, the share of Chinese brands in the Russian market was 56%, reaching an absolute record. Chinese companies have not only occupied a vacant niche after the exodus of Western brands, but are also actively pushing Russian manufacturers, squeezing out their market share, follows from Avtostat's analytics. The market leader at the beginning of 2023 was the Chinese brand Sitrak, along with its C7H truck model (produces tractors and dump trucks): in January, the company sold 372 vehicles.
“Compared to Russian and Belarusian manufacturers, the Chinese win in terms of price, build quality and level of manufacturability. Accordingly, KamAZ and MAZ are losing their market share in favor of Chinese cars,” said Vladimir Zhelobov, director of the car purchase department at Avtospectsentr and Avtodom, to the publication.
The Russian KamAZ was only in second place, having sold 168 cars of the 43118 series, another Chinese brand closes the top three – Shacman with the SX3258 model, of which 151 units were sold in January. At the end of 2022, for the first time in history, Chinese brands captured more than half of the Russian market: they accounted for 52%, while the absolute leader in terms of sales growth was the Sitrak brand, which until 2022 was not represented in Russia at all. At the end of 2022, its share was 15%. The company produces trucks based on the technologies of the European brand MAN.
Despite the reduction in competition with Western companies, in January 2023, KamAZ's share fell from 37% to 26% – now the company is losing competition to Chinese brands. Sales of the Russian concern fell by 24.2% to 1.8 thousand cars. However, Russian companies are not panicking about losing market share to Chinese competitors. A representative of KamAZ told the publication that the decrease in the share was due to the calculation of statistics by Avtostat, which does not take into account the supply of trucks under state orders, as well as deliveries to "new territories". The concern notes that production is not falling.
Chinese brands are actively capturing the Russian market throughout 2022. Already in the summer, almost immediately after the mass exodus of Western brands, the share of Chinese trucks in the Russian market exceeded Russian companies and reached 44%. In the future, Chinese companies only increased their shares.