According to statistics from the China Construction Machinery Association on major loader manufacturers, a total of 12,236 loaders of various types were sold in December 2025, representing a year-on-year increase of 30%.
Thus, all 12 months of the year saw positive year-on-year growth in loader sales, demonstrating a robust development momentum. More notably, the year-on-year growth rate for the last four months remained at a high level of around 30%, clearly indicating a steadily rising industry trend!
For the whole of 2025, cumulative loader sales reached 128,000 units, the third highest in the past 10 years (only after 140,000 units in 2021 and 130,000 units in 2020), with a year-on-year growth rate of 18.35%, the highest in nearly seven years.
In the domestic market, 5,291 loaders were sold in December, representing a year-on-year increase of 17.55%. The growth rate was significantly lower than in previous months. Looking at the whole year, except for a slight decline of 1% in January, the remaining 11 months all achieved positive year-on-year growth.
In 2025, domestic sales of loaders totaled 66,330 units, a year-on-year increase of 22.10%. While this marked a new high in nearly three years, it is still incomparable to the peak sales of hundreds of thousands of units in previous years. Furthermore, considering the end of the domestic infrastructure boom and the large-scale substitution effect of excavators, sales of hundreds of thousands of units are unlikely to be seen again in the future.
In overseas markets, loader exports reached 6,945 units in December, a strong record for the second-highest monthly sales in history (second only to 7,813 units in March 2023). The year-on-year growth rate of 41.47% not only set a new high for the year but also a new high in the past 32 months. In the past 20 months, loader export growth was negative in only two months, demonstrating a positive growth trend.
In 2025, cumulative loader exports reached 61,737 units, a year-on-year increase of 14.58%, accounting for 48.21% of total sales, roughly equal to the domestic market.
Focusing on the sales of electric loaders... In December, a total of 2,722 electric loaders were sold, representing a year-on-year growth of 218.7%, second only to March's 308.5% this year! However, due to a surge in exports in December, and given that the main market for electric loaders is domestic, the overall penetration rate actually declined to 22.25%, the lowest since April.
Looking at the tonnage structure, the trend of diversified sales is strengthening. The proportion of 5-ton models fell below 60% for the second consecutive month, hitting a new low of 55.07%, while the proportion of 6-ton models slightly increased to 30.12%. Models with a tonnage of 3 tons or more performed particularly well, with sales increasing to 72 units, nearly doubling month-on-month.
Looking at the full-year trend, electric loaders saw year-on-year growth of 100% in 10 months, and in the last 5 months, it has consistently maintained a growth rate above 150%. Total sales for the year reached 29,771 units, a year-on-year increase of 165%. While this is less than the over 200% growth rate of the previous two years, the surge in electric loader sales from just over a thousand units to 30,000 units in just three years is truly exhilarating!
Looking at the trend, electric loaders are at a crucial stage of transitioning from a policy-driven introduction phase to a value-driven explosive growth phase. The next five years are expected to see continued large-scale expansion, rapidly penetrating from closed scenarios like ports and mines into environmentally sensitive scenarios such as municipal engineering and green building. County-level and small-to-medium-sized project markets are expected to become new growth points.
However, alongside this rapid growth, the industry faces several concerns, including but not limited to severe homogenization leading to continuously declining product prices, with some companies even resorting to loss-making promotions to gain market share; high costs for core components such as batteries, resulting in many companies experiencing "increased revenue but not increased profits"; insufficient charging and swapping network coverage; and the need to improve low-temperature adaptability, limiting product application scenarios; and the accelerated rollout of electric products by international giants, potentially intensifying competition.
In conclusion, the loader industry delivered a remarkable performance in 2025. Faced with new opportunities and challenges, companies must leverage technological innovation to address core pain points, differentiate their strategies to seize market opportunities, and collaborate to improve the industrial ecosystem in order to continuously transform growth momentum into development momentum. It is believed that, driven by policy guidance, market demand, and corporate efforts, the loader industry will break through bottlenecks, achieve steady and sustainable development, and write a new chapter of higher quality and more resilient development amidst the waves of green transformation and global competition.
