After a few slow years, the construction industry is getting ready to expand, with sales of construction tools and materials, including bridge bearings, anticipated to grow next year.
This is according to Off-Highway Research consulting firm, which predicts a rebound in global unit sales of construction machinery, spurring on a five per cent increase in unit sales in 2017, the Financial Times reported.
This comes after a decline for the industry since 2011, as a result of falling commodity prices and economic problems in key countries, such as China, Japan, and North America.
David Phillips, managing director of Off-Highway Research, said: “Emerging markets were generally weak – the only significant exception being India – and developed regions of the world were not strong enough to offset the painful declines we saw in countries such as China.”
Unit sales in China dropped by 72 per cent last year in comparison with 2011, which has had a knock-on effect for other major economies in the world, according to the news provider.
Research from the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply echoes these findings, revealing construction output in the UK slowed during November 2015, in comparison with the previous month.
The Markit/CIPS UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index was 55.3 in November, a decline from 58.8 in October. This also represented the weakest overall output for the industry since mid-2013, other than before the elections in April last year.
While Off-Highway Research expects a three per cent decline in global unit sales of machinery used for construction in 2016, it has a much brighter outlook for next year. This will be the result of improving commodity prices and companies replacing vehicles with new ones.