Our team of dedicated stakeholders have actively pulled together to turnaround our business capabilities and improve our financial performance during very difficult recessionary challenges over the past three years. Our strategic plan has been focused on re-branding Kelso as a reliable American made supplier of high-quality performance equipment for the rail tank car industry. This was imperative and we believed that this process would eventually lead to a healthy financial turnaround. Under these established initiatives we have experienced improved sales results providing a steady return to our available capital reserves. This turn of events has allowed us to survive and keep our ambitions of business growth, product development and pursuit of regulatory approvals on course.
Management has been encouraged by sales-to-date growth for 2018 and the revenue prospects for 2019. Crude oil, ethanol and chemicals are the key commodities that are leading the way in the resurgence of tank car market activity. This stimulus has led rail tank car analysts to expect average new-build production rates to grow from approximately 12,000 tank cars in 2018 to 19,000 tank cars in 2019. Based on these new-build predictions and our historic retrofit/repair business Kelso expects to supply its specialized tank car equipment to over 8,000 tank cars in 2018 and over 10,000 tank cars in 2019.
A key dynamic for our growth of financial performance will be getting a wider variety of our tank car products adopted by hazmat shippers. Once this adoption trend is established, we expect customers to begin to specify combinations of our One-Bolt Manway, VRV and BOV along with our proven PRV. Our long-term goal is to improve tank car revenues from approximately $1,400 per tank car to in excess of $10,000 per tank car.
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