Big opportunities for aggregates suppliers as UK road maintenance funding at ten-year high

Funding for road maintenance work in Great Britain is in excess of £1.5 billion (€1.73bn) per year, a ten-year high. This includes local authority funding, Highways England, Transport Scotland and Transport for Wales spend, in addition to other sources such as the Government's Highways Maintenance Challenge Fund and the Pothole Action Fund.

This activity represents significant opportunities for suppliers of aggregates, bitumen, asphalt and other materials as well as contracting companies and other service providers.

Before the end of 2019, around 35% of the existing contracts for the maintenance of highways are due to expire in local authorities across Great Britain. These include county council contracts, major unitary authorities in London, Highways England and others.

These conclusions are drawn from the latest update by leading consultancy 671 BDS Marketing Research to its annual report identifying the arrangements that all unitary and county councils in Great Britain have in place for their highways maintenance. Report author Andy Sales, research director at BDS, said “The importance of these term contracts to materials suppliers and contractors cannot be underestimated, providing guaranteed workload and revenue. 868 Tarmac’s acquisitions of surfacing contractors JB Riney and Alun Griffiths in the last 12 months proves this. Both of these companies are active in the term maintenance contracts market, operating in London and Wales respectively.”

The BDS report identifies details of over 320 contracts and is the only source where this information can be found in one document. Details for each contract include the contracting authority, contractor, duration and end date, and value of the contract.

Further details of the report are available by contacting Andy Sales at BDS Marketing Research Ltd via <%$Linker:2Email<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary />000link-email [email protected]falsemailto:[email protected]truefalse%> or 01761 433035.