The independent aftermarket has tightened its grip on Europe's parts and service business. A new pan-European study puts the IAM — the independent parts and workshop channel — at 64% of the continent's €156 billion automotive aftermarket, and finds the segment grew its share between 2021 and 2025 despite steadily rising vehicle complexity.
The scale of that position is hard to overstate. Sixty-four per cent of a €156 billion market represents a pool worth roughly €100 billion, leaving the authorised service channel with the rest. For parts manufacturers and distributors, the independent trade remains the volume route to Europe's service business — and on this evidence it is a channel that expands rather than erodes.
Vehicle complexity has long been treated as a structural advantage for authorised workshops, with their direct access to manufacturer data, tooling and training. Yet the study's central finding is that independents gained ground across the 2021–2025 window anyway. For suppliers, the implication is clear: the independent channel is not a legacy segment in managed decline but a market still extending its footprint — one that rewards continued investment in independent-facing product lines, catalogues and logistics.
The data lands against an uneasy backdrop in Europe's east. NATO's Canadian-led multinational brigade in Latvia — 2,000 of its soldiers Canadian, on a mission Canada has led for nearly a decade — has been deployed closer to the country's borders with Russia and Belarus, while in Riga lawmakers were set to begin negotiations on a new government after a parliamentary election in which pro-Ukraine Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs's four-party coalition took 35% of the vote. For suppliers and workshop networks in the Baltics — a region EastAutoNews has tracked as both a used-import stronghold and a fast-moving logistics corridor — a resilient independent parts channel is a quiet stabiliser: whatever the political weather, vehicles keep needing service, and independent workshops keep needing parts.
