Industry Performance Improves in 2007/08

Demand and use of construction materials has continued to grow on previous years, with 2007/08 seeing a record 53,909,064 tonnes of product being sold at an average of $13.72, as reported by SARAH ANDREW.

DATA for the 2007/08 financial year has recently become available having been diligently collected and collated by the DPI’s statistical review team.

The process starts early in the financial year with all Work Authority holders being asked to provide a summary of their production for the last financial year – without their contribution this data would be useless. Once returned, the data is entered, cleaned and analysis takes place.

Consolidated data is available from the DPI’s website, www.dpi.vic.gov.au, by following the links. From here, statistical reports can be sourced since 1995. This provides researchers with quality baseline information.

Particular aspects of this year’s data are demonstrated in the graphs associated with this article.

The reported production of 53,909,064 tonnes showed a 3% growth on the previous year, however is down from the past two years where growth was sitt ing around 10%. This however isn’t an uncommon trend over the last 17 years, where several years of high growth are followed by slowing figures.

Interestingly, although production has slowed, the unit rate has increased again in 2007/08 with a further 10% increase following from last year’s 9% rise.

The overall unit rate for 2007/08 was $13.72, however when fill products are excluded this rises to $14.21 and when only single sized products are considered this rises again to $17.98.

The table shows the tonnage, total sales and average unit rate of materials produced last year. These range from slate (at $19.39/tonne) through to clay (at $3.30/tonne).

Other trends seen in the data this year included:

• Per capita usage in Victoria increasing slightly from 10 tonnes/head of population to 10.2 tonnes/head of population
• Rehabilitation bonds increasing to $58.8 million, a 19% increase on last year
• Royalties of $4.8 million being collected from extractive industries, a 40% increase on last year
• Total number of Work Authorities increasing from 865 to 868 with only 14 new Work Authorities being granted (three fewer than last year)

The Annual Statistical Report is available online from the DPI’s website, www.dpi.vic.gov.au through their online store (the reports are free to access). From there you can access reports for the last 10 years enabling trends to be established.

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