Registrations of new agricultural tractors in the UK have more than doubled in December 2017, reaching 1,360 units, compared to the same period in 2016.
According to the Agricultural Engineers Association (AEA), this is mainly due to a large number of machines being pre-registered in advance on the introduction of new regulations on 1 January 2018.
The AEA said it is likely that this will lead to some suppression of the number of registrations in the early months of 2018.
The big rise in December brought the total number of tractors registered in 2017 to 12,033, 13% more than in 2016.
This is only the second rise in the number of registrations in nine years and the first since 2011, figures show.
Even without the additional pre-registrations, last year’s total would still have been higher than previous year, although the rate of increase would have been lower.
