The worrying state of the construction industry is becoming increasingly evident outside those figures that show sharp falls in output, continuously weak orders and job losses. The latest Services Producer Price Indicies makes for very gloomy reading for the plant hire industry.
Thanks to swift and generous efforts made by the Office for National Statistics I can give you the latest official update of activity in the rental and leasing world. The latest data – a non-published sub-set of the Index of Services released this morning – shows a continued rise in the amount of work done by plant hire firms in the final quarter. I have also updated the construction output figures to the latest index provided in the GDP series….
Plant hire firms continued on their journey of rebuilding prices throughout last year with the latest figures from the services producer prices series showing another upward tick. Prices in the final quarter of 2011 were up about 3% on a year ago. Against consumer price inflation, currently running at 3.6%, and in the face of upward pressure on costs, this hardly suggests times have got easy for the sector. But with activity recently on the up, see graph, and with firms…
Construction plant hire prices remained subdued in the second quarter of this year showing no sign of growth after the mini spike in prices recorded late last year, according to the latest services producer prices index. This puts prices down on the same time a year ago by about 0.6% in cash terms and leaves prices more than 8% lower than at the peak in 2006. With cost increases squeezing most if not all businesses, this suggests margins will remain…
The mini surge in plant hire activity in February and March came to an end with activity dropping by 2.8% in April, according to the latest Index of Services figures. Okay, there was an extra Bank holiday in April with the Royal Wedding that will have dampened activity. But conversely the weather was rather better than normal and may well have helped support activity in construction. Too much should not be drawn from one month’s figures, but the dip in activity in…
Construction plant hire prices have taken a dive again after rallying at the tail end of last year, according to the latest services producer prices index. The ONS data shows how in the final quarter of last year prices perked up to a level last seen almost two years earlier. However the rally now looks short lived and prices are once again back to similar rates as were seen in 2003. The question is whether or not this may be…
The economy is flatlining – that is the assessment we are encouraged to draw from the first stab at national output by the statisticians at ONS. The 0.5% growth in the first quarter of this year to counter the 0.5% snow induced fall in 2010 Q4 was very much in line with the consensus view among economists. So it will not come as a surprise. But the stagnation over the past six months implied by the figures is a blow…
There’s further support for the argument that January wasn’t really as bad as the construction output figures might have us think.
The plant hire sector is showing signs of weakening along with the slowdown in growth in construction. The latest Index of Services figures show the lowest level of output from firms renting machinery and equipment since May. The graph above tracks this output on a quarterly basis against construction output. And not surprisingly the correlation is about as close to bang on as one might expect. As an aside, this will provide some comfort for the statisticians at ONS who produce the…
The latest data from the national statisticians ONS on services producer prices adds more concerns over rising inflation for contractors. The ONS’s services producer price indices provide data on price movements across a range of businesses, including plant hire, that provide services to other businesses. The recession in construction had driven plant hire prices down hard. But now it seems they are bouncing back as is clear from the graph below. Prices in the final quarter of 2010 were 2.2% up on…