Trend Tracker’s Repair Market Snapshot Report for April has revealed the volatility of the market at the moment, with challenges coming through inflation, supply, and labour.
While the data gathered in April can be considered something of an anomaly due to school holidays and Bank Holidays, the report found that the issues faced by the entire motor eco-system were deeper than expected.
A key driver was rising costs, with 12-month inflation rates of 18.8% for electricity and 28.1% for gas in October 2021, which have both risen further since.
Meanwhile, average petrol prices stood at 160.2 pence per litre in March 2022, the highest recorded, while the average price of diesel in March 2022, 170.5 pence per litre, was also the highest on record.
The report said, “Without any doubt, these are extremely testing times for many, but for this industry specifically, reliant on energy and fuel in everyday cost of production, this could be a rise in costs that proves too much to bear for some.”
Elsewhere, the skills shortage experienced by the industry for years has been exacerbated by a rise in vacancies across all sectors; the number of job vacancies in January to March 2022 rose to a new record of 1,288,000.
The cost then, of attracting new employees and keeping existing ones is rising. The report found that growth in average total pay including bonuses was 5.4% from December 2021 to February 2022. However, set against the rising cost of living this is expected to need to rise further through 2023.
The final challenging market dynamic is in the supply chain bottlenecks, which is impacting businesses in all industries. With shipping costs rising by as much as 600%, 84% of CFOs at organisations with annual revenue between $100m to $3bn said they see supply chain disruptions as either a ‘moderate’ or ‘severe’ risk.
For the automotive repair sector specifically, which still operates a ‘just in time’ supply strategy, parts delays have seen overall cycle times exceed 50 days, up from 30 only one year ago, with data from Consumer Intelligence discovering that over 57% of those who had made a claim still waiting for their vehicle to be repaired.
This is set against a drop in total repair estimates during the month of April of almost 30,000 repairs compared to March.
