(Yicai Global) July 10 -- Global digger sales tumbled in the first half of the year as a result of China’s insipid real estate market.

The number of excavators sold worldwide sank 24 percent in the six months ended June 30 from a year earlier, according to data from major manufacturers reported by the China Construction Machinery Association. Sales shrank 44 percent in China.

Diggers are the biggest product category among building equipment and are mainly used for infrastructure and real estate projects. Housing starts and real estate investment in China have been falling since February 2021, with digger sales starting to fall in the middle of that year.

Global sales by major excavator manufacturers fell 20 percent to 261,000 units in 2022 from a year earlier, and plunged 45 percent in China alone, according to a survey by the CCMA.

Housing starts sank 22.6 percent in the first five months of this year from a year ago, increasing from a 21.2 percent drop in the first four months, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, indicating that developers are unwilling to get to work on new housing projects.

Spending on infrastructure projects, another key area for diggers, has underpinned and steadied the excavator market’s growth since last year and over the real estate sector’s sluggish period, a research report by Zhongtai Securities said. Housing starts and digger sales have diverged, while the growth of investment in infrastructure and such sales remained consistent, the report noted.

But the growth in infrastructure investment has slowed recently. After jumping by 8.8 percent in the first three months of 2023 from a year ago and climbing 8.5 percent in the first four months, it rose 7.5 percent in the five months ended May 31, according to NBS data.

Editor: Martin Kadiev