“Everyone gets very euphoric about the housing recovery, thinking that the UK construction industry hs recovered,” O’Shea said in a phone interview with Bloomberg news agency. “It’s still 20 percent below where it was at the peak, even with the housing and the infrastructure booms, which are both by-and-large government initiatives.”
UK home prices rose to a record last month, helped by Chancellor George Osborne’s loan programme to make first-time urchases easier. While the government also invests in major infrastructure projects alongside a separate €63.75 billion (£51 billion) loan-guarantee initiative, commercial projects don’t benefit from any subsidies, O’Shea said.
“Commercial is the biggest sector at something like £20 billion (€25 billion), but our projection for its growth rate from 2013 to 2017 is only 3% annually,” continued O’Shea during the phone interview. In contrast, the Hanson CEO predicts housing and infrastructure investment will average about 7% growth annually to 2017.
Hanson is the UK brand of Germany’s
The €1.375 billion (£1.1 billion) generated in UK sales last year, represented about 10% of HeidelbergCement’s total revenue.
