Rehlko Demo Days 2026 took place in Reggio Emilia, Italy, where the company brought together six OEM partners and nine machines to show how its engines perform in real working conditions.

Held July 13–14 at the company’s Reggio Emilia headquarters, the fourth edition of Demo Days brought six OEM partners – Cormidi, MDB, Palfinger, Vermeer, Wacker Neuson and Weidemann – together to show nine machines running Rehlko engines, and gave European trade press the chance to evaluate that performance under real operating conditions rather than off a spec sheet

“The best way to understand an engine isn’t to read about it, it’s to experience the machine it powers. Demo Days reflects the way we work with our OEM partners every day. We engineer engines as part of a complete machine, helping our customers deliver greater productivity, reliability and value to the people who depend on their equipment.”

Said Eric Fontaine, President of Rehlko Engines, in the company’s official release.

Eric Fontaine, President of Rehlko Engines, opening the Demo Days 2026

The headline product was the KDI1903 TCR HP (High Power), the newest member of the KDI diesel family, delivering up to 50 kW (67 hp) and 250 Nm of torque – fully Stage V compliant, running on 100% HVO-compatible fuel, and built to extend productivity without giving up the compact footprint that has made KDI a benchmark in off-highway applications. But the more interesting story sitting underneath that launch is strategic: how Rehlko is choosing to compete in a non-road engine market that, according to the independent analysis presented at the event, is growing steadily but not transforming as fast as the headlines suggest.

The market Rehlko is betting into

The day opened with a market presentation by Alex Woodrow of KGP Company on the state of diesel and gasoline engines for non-road machinery – twenty years of data tracking the global market from a 2005 baseline to the present. The picture: the global non-road diesel machine market has grown from 1.74 million units in 2005 to 5.1 million in 2025, with the number of OEMs tracked expanding from 60 to 122 and now 252, spread across 35 countries. Developed markets – Europe, North America, Japan, Korea – have essentially plateaued around 1.8 million units, while the growth has come from China (1.1 million to 1.7 million units) and India (600,000 to 1.3 million, with Indian tractor output alone now exceeding a million units a year). The competitive map has shifted just as sharply: in 2015 there was no Chinese OEM in the global top ten for construction equipment; by 2025, XCMG, Sany and Liugong had all broken into that group.

The near-term outlook, as presented, carries real geopolitical texture. A late-February forecast assuming no major disruption had to be rewritten within days once the Iran situation escalated – an initial cut of roughly 300,000 units from the 5 million forecast was later revised down to about 150,000, a 2–3% reduction rather than a market-breaking shock. The 2025 growth story, still positive overall, is being carried almost entirely by Indian tractor demand, and the growth that is happening elsewhere is being described as export-led rather than domestic-demand-led: China’s domestic construction and housing markets remain weak even as the country’s excavator and loader exports keep climbing, Japanese construction equipment exports are up roughly 37% year-to-date despite a soft home market, and India is exporting more as well. Latin America was flagged as down roughly 10% this year, with recovery expected only in 2026.

The chart compares production volumes among the leading agricultural and construction equipment OEMs in 2015 and 2025, highlighting market consolidation, global expansion and the growing influence of Asian manufacturers. It also lists several major mergers and acquisitions that have reshaped the industry.

On electrification, the presentation’s framing was that the shift is real but concentrated rather than universal. Material handling is moving to electric fastest, driven largely by China’s switch from diesel to lithium-powered forklifts; aerial work platforms are electrifying for indoor use while larger outdoor units remain engine-powered; and construction electrification outside China remains limited, propped up domestically in China by policy mandates pushing electric machines into coal mining and steel refining.

Diesel, in other words, was presented as remaining the dominant fuel mix through the forecast period – with decarbonization expected to come first from machine efficiency gains (engines, transmissions, hydraulics and controls, estimated to be capable of removing roughly a quarter of fossil diesel use on their own), then from drop-in biofuels like HVO, and only later – realistically not before 2035–2040 — from e-fuels and hydrogen at scale. The crossover point at which zero-emission machines would be expected to outnumber internal-combustion ones was described as having been pushed back to 2045–2047, from an earlier working assumption of 2032, largely because of policy reversal in the US and a watering-down of legislative ambition in Europe, even as China continues to move faster on its own path.

The regulatory outlook named California as the likely first mover on the next tightening of standards (Tier 5), with Europe’s Stage 6 expected around 2032–2033 and China’s Stage 5 notable as the first standard globally to include CO2 limits alongside traditional pollutants. The 37–56 kW power band was flagged specifically as the next likely innovation zone, on the reasoning that the current NOx ceiling for engines in that range is artificially generous and likely to be tightened toward the same threshold applied to smaller units – a detail that lands directly on the segment Rehlko’s own KDI and KSD platforms are built to serve.

Looking further out, the presentation anticipated continued OEM consolidation, growing use of automation and AI for lifecycle analysis in construction and agriculture, a below-56kW segment that keeps growing even as several markets shift from new-machine sales toward repair-and-maintenance economics, and a genset market where data centers move from 2 MW toward 5 MW units even as small standby generators continue to dominate by volume.

The HeavyQuip Magazine

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