After four very strong years in which Krone’s agricultural equipment and spare parts business surged ahead, results for the 2013/2014 financial year reveal a slight dip to €548 million (€564 million during the previous twelve-month period). Fortunately, the Commercial Trailers division generated a turnover of €1.08 billion (€925 million in 2013), allowing the Krone Group as a whole to increase sales by 9% to a record of more than €1.6 billion. Accounting for 28% of total sales, Germany remains the biggest market for Krone’s agricultural machines, with Central and Northern Europe good for 33% and Eastern Europe 14%. A quarter of Krone’s agricultural machines are destined for overseas markets. The company sold around 24,000 agricultural machines from 1 August 2013 to 31 July 2014. The BiG X SPFH is currently the most important, and a product the company recently invested €10 million in a new production line. The range has also been bolstered with the ‘smaller’ BiG X 480 und BiG X 580, as part of a plan to expand the company’s market share both at home and abroad. “The past year was an exhausting but also a successful one for us,” says CEO Bernard Krone. “We have fulfilled our responsibilities and done our homework thoroughly. It is not only in terms of production technology that we lead the way; we have also consolidated our position as a complete service provider for all our machinery and trailers. This is a solid foundation on which we can build in the next few years and continue to grow in markets old and new.”