Construction materials: “all lights flashing red” for concrete and aggregates in 2024

“All the indicators are red” for 2024, Alain Plantier, president of the National Union of Quarry Industries and Construction Materials (Unicem) told AFP on the sidelines of the presentation of the sector's activity report in 2023 Thursday.

For 2023, the production of ready-mixed concrete should have fallen by 6,5% in France compared to that of 2022, to 36,7 million m3, according to estimates from Unicem which also expects a decline of 7,5% of aggregate production, to 320 million tonnes next year.

For 2024, the profession expects an additional decline of 6% in aggregates and 10% for ready-mixed concrete.

“The economic situation has deteriorated much more than announced at the end of 2022, especially in new construction and individual homes (...) where we have seen sales collapsing, building permits collapsing and construction projects too", summarizes Carole Deneuve, head of the economic department of Unicem.

Same story with the cement manufacturer Lafarge (Holcim), interviewed in parallel. “The market outlook for 2024 is poor,” François Petry, general manager of Lafarge France, told AFP.

In October, the morale of French real estate developers had never been so low since 1991, when the first quarterly surveys on the prospects for construction starts carried out by INSEE were launched, adds Ms. Deneuve.

According to the Real Estate Developers Observatory, sales of new homes fell by 48,6% in the third quarter, an unprecedented level since the observatory existed.

“As a result, the materials follow the trend,” adds Mr. Plantier. “As we respond to needs, by extracting materials from quarries, we are not going to store raw materials for the sake of it,” he explains.

Unicem represents 2.400 companies on some 6.000 sites, mainly aggregate quarries or ready-mixed concrete stations, as well as stone specialists, who represent some 77% of the turnover of construction materials in France.

"Dramatic"

Alain Plantier also fears a decision to stop construction activities in Ile-de-France for a period of "two to four months around the Olympic Games" next summer, and in particular the stopping of concrete stations along the the Seine, which he considers “dramatic”.

According to him, this would generate a deficit of 500.000 cubic meters of fresh concrete in Ile-de-France, one of the regions which builds the most in France, and 1 million tonnes less aggregates: "Companies need a business to live on, they cannot afford several months without turnover", especially since "the cash flow is currently tight".

The only ray of sunshine, the public works sector is “better oriented” thanks to well-filled order books in public procurement.

This awakening can be explained by the six-year electoral cycle linked to the rhythm of municipal elections in France. It comes three years after the last election, when construction projects are accelerating.

“We see a lot of work in the field of energy (biomass boilers, connections, etc.) civil engineering and mobility near large metropolises,” underlines Mr. Plantier, while “road works and earthworks” are “rather lagging behind”.

In the field of waste, new eco-organizations responsible for managing the recovery, sorting and recycling of materials from demolition sites, were created at the beginning of 2023 to reduce CO2 emissions from the sector and combat illegal dumping. .

The objective is to achieve 17 million tonnes recovered in 2024, compared to 3 million tonnes of rubble and “inert” waste this first year, he recalls.

“Our conviction remains intact, we are the solution for building in an innovative and sustainable way and we will maintain our decarbonization and recycling efforts,” adds François Petry, CEO of Lafarge.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.