Sales of Heavy Excavators: A visible impact of the Grand Paris Project

In 2016, in France, sales of Heavy Excavators (Crawler excavators >12tons and Wheel Excavators >11 tons) grew by +22%. This year, over the first 8 months, sales are still on the rise with a rate of +27%. Thus, for two years, the French market has been doing well.
Two-thirds of French regions, representing 75% of the total market, are in good shape. Historically, the Ile-de-France (Paris area) and Auvergne-Rhône Alpes (Lyon area) regions concentrate a very important part of sales. The Auvergne-Rhône Alpes region remains the most important one, followed by the Ile-de-France region, ranked second.
This year, from January to August, these two regions represent respectively 14% and 13% of the total.
However, the share of the region Ile-de-France is growing faster. Back to 2016, sales in this region increased by +28% vs 23% in the region Auvergne-Rhône Alpes. This year, the rate of growth achieves +120% vs +25% in the region Auvergne-Rhône Alpes.
This is directly related to the tremendous project of Grand Paris in which 200kms of new railway lines and 68 new interconnected stations are in construction.