FLEET disposals are going to become more and more sophisticated as companies look to maximise residual values as a means of maintaining their margins in an unrelentingly competitive market place. Residual values are often regarded as the final frontier by fleet managers, but a new report highlights the increasingly complex systems which have been developed by the leasing and rental industries to protect their back-end profits.

MarketLine International's UK Car Remarketing report charts the progress that has been made to date and examines the likely impact of new developments such as electronic auctions and the role of the rapidly expanding used car supermarket sector. It says the second-hand car market has come in for an unprecedented amount of attention from the leasing and rental industries and franchised dealer network.

The report predicts an explosion in used car sales over the next three years, with a 21% increase in total transactions to 8.75 million by the year 2000. The total volume of cars remarketed - as opposed to sold privately - this year has risen from a little over 3 million in 1994 to an estimated 3.7 million this year, with the value of the market increasing from £12.6 billion to £19.8 billion.