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New light commercial imports shine

Posted on 06 November, 2017

 With a total of 29,960 passenger and light commercial vehicle imports for the month of October, the pipeline continues to be strong across all sectors. Imports of used cars increased by 20.7 per cent compared with the same month last year with 14,866 cars crossing the border last month. Used light commercial vehicles were down by 5.4 per cent, with 712 units entering NZ, the only glitch in an otherwise strong month for imports.  New cars were up slightly with 10,473 imports, up 3.5 per cent on the 10,115 that entered in October 2016. The stand out though were the 3,909 new light commercial vehicles that came in, this was the best month of 2017 and year to date, there have been more vehicles in this segment imported than the whole of 2016. For the full year 2016 there were 29,852 new light commercial’s imported and year to date 2017 this figure sits at 31,259 and is shaping up to be a bumper year for this category. Year to date, 143,866 used cars and 95,326 new cars have entered the country up 16,832 units and 13.2 per cent for used, and 5,270 units and 5.2 per cent for new passenger vehicles. In the used car market Japan increased 24.2 per cent on the same month last year, increasing their monthly market share to 94.68 per cent, last month 11,256 were sourced from that country. Australia, Singapore and the UK were all down on October 2016 with 24.4, 16.5 and 14.1 per cent drops respectively.