Market evolution: Special purpose vehicles (CN 8705) — 2015–2025

Introduction

This report examines the evolution of EU extra-Union trade in special-purpose motor vehicles under Combined Nomenclature code 8705, covering the period from 2015 to 2025. The product heading encompasses a diverse range of vehicles — crane lorries, fire-fighting vehicles, concrete-mixer lorries, mobile drilling derricks, road sweepers, spraying lorries, mobile workshops, and other specialised designs — that are principally designed for purposes other than transporting persons or goods. The EU is a dominant global supplier of these vehicles, and the decade under review saw notable structural changes in the value, volume, geographic orientation, and product composition of both exports and imports. Three major dynamics stand out: a striking divergence between export tonnage and export value; a significant geographic rebalancing of trade flows; and a compositional shift within the product mix accompanied by robust growth in domestic production capacity.

1. The Value–Volume Divergence: More Vehicles, Less Weight, Higher Revenues

The most striking macro-level finding is that EU export value for CN 8705 grew by 16.1% over the decade (from €3.82 billion in 2015 to €4.44 billion in 2025), yet export tonnage fell by 17.9% over the same period. Meanwhile, the number of vehicles exported more than doubled, surging 134.1% from 35,853 units to 83,944 units. These three trajectories — rising value, falling weight, exploding unit count — only reconcile if the average exported vehicle became significantly lighter and cheaper per unit while being shipped in far greater quantities.

1.1 Export value held up despite declining physical volume

Between 2015 and 2025, EU exports of special-purpose vehicles rose from €3.82 billion to €4.44 billion, representing a cumulative increase of 16.1%. The period was not uniformly upward: the peak was reached in 2023 at €4.72 billion, followed by a partial retreat in 2024–2025. Export tonnage, however, tells a very different story. Starting at 423,397 tonnes in 2015 — the highest level in the series — it declined to a low of 313,469 tonnes in 2020 (partly reflecting the COVID-19 shock) before partially recovering, but ending the period at 347,788 tonnes, 17.9% below the starting value. The implied price per tonne consequently rose by 41.3%, from €9,027/t to €12,759/t.

1.2 Vehicle count surged, driven by lighter sub-segments

The supplementary unit data reveals that the number of special-purpose vehicles exported by the EU rose from 35,853 units in 2015 to 83,944 units in 2025, a 134.1% increase. This growth was almost entirely concentrated in the CN 870590 sub-category ("other special-purpose vehicles"), whose unit count grew from 25,721 to 76,094 (+196%). The average price per vehicle in this sub-segment fell from €51,873 to €24,322, confirming that the EU increasingly exported lighter, less expensive special-purpose vehicles in large numbers. In contrast, the high-value crane-lorry segment (CN 870510) maintained a stable per-vehicle export price of around €487,000 but saw its unit count grow only modestly (+14%, from 3,355 to 3,827 vehicles).

The halving of the average export price per vehicle, even as overall export value rose, is therefore a compositional effect: the category gaining fastest is also the least expensive per unit.

1.3 Import growth was strong but remains structurally modest

EU imports of CN 8705 vehicles grew from €264 million in 2015 to €435 million in 2025, an increase of 65.0%. Tonnage rose by a nearly identical 65.7% (from 36,096 t to 59,817 t), meaning the price per tonne on the import side was essentially flat (−0.4%, from €7,307 to €7,274). The number of imported vehicles doubled from 5,043 to 10,085, while the per-vehicle import price fell 17.5% to €43,145. Despite this growth, imports remained a small fraction of the EU's total trade in this product: the trade surplus widened from €3.56 billion to €4.00 billion (+12.5%), and the EU's net import reliance deepened from −66.7% to −121.7%, confirming the EU's position as a structural net exporter whose export surplus has roughly doubled relative to domestic output.

2. Geographic Rebalancing: The Atlantic Pivot and China's Emergence

The geographic profile of EU trade in special-purpose vehicles underwent significant change between 2015 and 2025. On the export side, the United States and Australia replaced Middle Eastern markets as the primary engines of growth. On the import side, China rose from negligible levels to become a major supplier, while Türkiye also expanded rapidly. These shifts altered the concentration structure of trade in opposite directions for exports and imports.

2.1 The US and Australia displaced Saudi Arabia and Egypt as top export growth drivers

The United States became the EU's single largest export destination for CN 8705 vehicles, with shipments rising from €326 million in 2015 to €768 million in 2025 (+135.9%). The US share of total EU extra-Union exports thus grew substantially. Australia recorded even faster growth in proportional terms, surging from €79 million to €294 million (+273.4%). Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia — the third-largest destination in 2015 at €379 million — saw its imports from the EU collapse to €124 million (−67.3%), and Egyptian imports fell from €98 million to €41 million (−58.1%). The United Kingdom, which left the EU single market during this period, remained the second-largest destination (€588 million in 2025, +50.4% vs. 2015), while Switzerland and Norway provided stable European-adjacent demand.

The decline in Middle Eastern demand — particularly from Saudi Arabia, which fell from the third- to the fifth-largest partner — may reflect reduced infrastructure and construction spending following the 2014–2016 oil-price downturn, while the simultaneous rise of the US and Australian markets points to sustained construction activity and fleet-renewal cycles in those economies.

2.2 China emerged as a major import source from a near-zero base

On the import side, China's share grew from a mere €1.6 million in 2015 to €51.5 million in 2025 — a 3,112.9% increase that represents by far the fastest growth rate among major import sources. This brought China into the top tier of EU suppliers, overtaking traditional sources. Türkiye similarly expanded from €7.2 million to €37.4 million (+420.3%). The United Kingdom, benefiting from post-Brexit trade reorientation, grew from €55 million to €127 million (+131.7%) to become the EU's largest single import source. Switzerland, previously the top import partner at €93 million, contracted to €60 million (−35.3%).

China's rapid ascent is consistent with its broader strategy of exporting capital goods and construction-related vehicles to European markets, often at competitive price points. The volatility of Chinese import flows is also notably high, with a coefficient of variation of 1.30, indicating that this trade remains episodic rather than stable.

2.3 Export concentration rose while import sources diversified

The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for EU exports by destination rose from 458 to 683 (+49.0%), indicating that export flows became more concentrated on a smaller number of key partners — principally the US, UK, and Australia. For imports, the HHI fell from 2,186 to 1,630 (−25.4%), reflecting a meaningful diversification of supply sources as China, Türkiye, and the UK gained share from previously dominant suppliers like Switzerland. These opposing trends suggest that while the EU's supply base became more competitive and varied, its demand base narrowed around a few high-value Western markets.

3. Product Mix Shifts and the Expansion of Domestic Production

Beneath the aggregate trade figures, the product composition of both exports and imports changed materially. The EU's domestic production base expanded strongly in both volume and value, reinforcing the sector's export orientation. Meanwhile, specialisation patterns across EU Member States reveal a concentrated but geographically diverse production landscape.

3.1 The "other special-purpose" category became the dominant export driver

The product-segment breakdown shows that CN 870590 ("other special-purpose vehicles," excluding concrete-mixer lorries, fire-fighting vehicles, mobile drilling derricks, and crane lorries) became the largest sub-category by export value by 2025 (€1.85 billion), nearly matching crane lorries (CN 870510, €1.86 billion). In tonnage terms, 870590 already dominated at 111,620 tonnes. The explosive unit-count growth discussed in Section 1 was concentrated here: from 25,721 to 76,094 vehicles, implying that road sweepers, spraying lorries, mobile workshops, and similar lighter vehicles found growing international demand — likely driven by urbanisation, municipal investment, and environmental regulation in destination markets.

3.2 Concrete-mixer and fire-fighting vehicle exports contracted in volume

In contrast to the growth of the "other" category, two historically important sub-segments experienced sustained volume declines in exports:

• Concrete-mixer lorries (CN 870540): Export tonnage fell from 54,897 t to 30,387 t (−45%), and unit count dropped from 4,240 to 2,198 vehicles (−48%). Export value declined from €263 million to €156 million (−41%). This likely reflects increased competition from non-EU manufacturers (including Chinese producers) in third-country markets, as well as cyclical weakness in construction in some traditional export destinations.

• Fire-fighting vehicles (CN 870530): Export tonnage declined from 30,413 t to 20,436 t (−33%), and unit count fell from 2,453 to 1,749 vehicles (−29%). However, the per-unit export price rose from €254,783 to €312,152 (+23%), suggesting a shift toward more expensive, specialised models. Export value in this segment was volatile — dropping from €625 million in 2015 to a trough of €353 million in 2023 before recovering to €546 million in 2025.

3.3 EU domestic production expanded strongly, underpinning the net-exporter position

The EU's production of special-purpose vehicles grew from 28,178 units (2015) to 49,660 units (2025), a 76.2% increase, with a peak of 119,550 units reached in an intermediate year. Production value rose even faster, from €3.23 billion to €7.82 billion (+142.4%), implying a rising average production value per unit — from approximately €114,500 to €157,500. This expansion in both quantity and value underpinned the EU's deepening net export reliance and its rising export propensity, which increased from 47.5% to 60.4%.

The specialisation data for 2025 shows that the EU's production base is geographically concentrated: Germany accounted for 38.9% of total EU production value (with an RCA of 1.84), followed by Italy (24.0%, RCA 3.00) and Austria. Latvia exhibited the highest relative specialisation (RCA 6.53), though its share of total EU output remained small (2.2%). At the other end, Greece, Ireland, and Bulgaria showed very low specialisation (RCA below 0.1), indicating that most EU Member States are either absent from or marginal to this sector.

Conclusion

The EU's special-purpose vehicle sector (CN 8705) maintained and expanded its position as a leading global supplier between 2015 and 2025, despite significant structural shifts. Export value grew by 16.1% to €4.44 billion even as tonnage declined by 17.9%, a paradox explained by a massive surge in the number of lighter, less expensive vehicles exported — particularly in the "other special-purpose" sub-category (CN 870590), whose unit count nearly quadrupled. The geographic orientation of exports pivoted strongly toward the United States and Australia, while Middle Eastern markets such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt contracted sharply. On the import side, China's emergence as a supplier (from €1.6 million to €51.5 million) signals growing competitive pressure, even if the EU's net trade surplus remains overwhelmingly positive (€4.0 billion in 2025). Domestic production expanded substantially in both volume and value, supported by Germany and Italy as the dominant manufacturing hubs. Looking ahead, the sector faces the dual challenge of sustaining its export competitiveness in higher-value segments (crane lorries, fire-fighting vehicles) while managing the growing import penetration of lighter special-purpose vehicles from new manufacturing centres, notably in China and Türkiye.