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The
UK Panel Building Market 2003-2013 £m Panel Builders Selling Prices
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The UK panel building
market was worth an estimated £554 million in 2008, representing a
decline of around 8% compared to 2007. This is a sharp downturn,
following a few years of stability in the marketplace. The
estimates for 2009 and 2010 also suggest further deterioration,
reflecting the difficult state of the UK economy in general, and
the difficult state of the industrial sector of the economy in
particular.
Growth in electricity
consumption tends to follow levels of economic growth and in more
difficult times electricity consumption tends to fall with adverse
short-term implications for the usage of panels. However, greater
levels of capital investment in this sector may support panel
building opportunities.
Forecast underlying
growth in power consumption is likely to provide some growth
opportunities for panel builders in the medium to long term. An
adverse impact is represented by increasing levels of industry
concentration in the UK which tends to act as a market restraint
for panel builders. The current global recession is likely to
reduce the range of opportunities for panel builders in the short
to medium term.
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In the medium to long
term, it is likely that energy efficiency legislation, and the
requirement for higher levels of control and monitoring, emission control
equipment etc will result in a supply of increasing complex panels, with
a wider range of value added opportunities, in new build and retrofit.
An ongoing development in the
industry is the trend towards modular panels and enclosures, which are
claimed to lead to significant reductions in panel assembly time.
However, the continuing usage
of PC-based control functions represents a long-term adverse influence on
the development of the panel building market in the UK. Also there is a
general trend towards more intelligent software controlled panels,
providing additional functionality, improved reliability and smaller
dimensioned components and enclosures than traditional panels.
The impact of these, and other,
influences is forecast to result in a declining market 2009 to 2010, with
forecasts suggesting that the next 2 years will be very difficult,
followed by stabilisation in 2011 and an improvement in 2012 and 2013,
reflecting the impact of the Olympics, both on the economy and on the
levels of business and consumer optimism generally.
Control panels are constructed
for a wide range of end uses throughout industry, construction, the
infrastructure and utilities sectors. Power distribution panels,
including custom-built switch boards and distribution boards, account for
almost half the market, reflecting significant use in the commercial and
industrial sectors.
The structure of the panel
building market is fragmented and it is estimated that there are about
500-600 companies engaged in panel building, the majority of which are
likely to have an annual sales turnover of under £3 million and range
from large multi-national panel builders to companies with small
ancillary panel building operations.
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