Construction is continuing to boom across the country if ready-mix concrete statistics are anything to go by.
Ready-mix concrete production was more than 1 million cubic metres in the June 2017 quarter, says Stats NZ.
This continued the high levels of the past two years.
Production in the June 2017 quarter was 1.03 million cubic metres, down 2 percent from the June 2016 quarter (when it was at a record 1.05 million cubic metres).
“Ready-mix concrete production has been running above 1 million cubic metres per quarter for over a year, except in March quarters,” Construction Statistics Manager Melissa McKenzie notes.
“This June quarter, enough concrete was produced to build almost 69 Sky Towers.”
Auckland active
The Auckland region accounted for more than one-third of the total ready-mix concrete production.
At 377,000 cubic metres in the June 2017 quarter, this was down two per cent from the June 2016 quarter.
Canterbury saw 176,000 cubic metres of ready-mix concrete produced in the June 2017 quarter, down 17 per cent from the June 2016 quarter.
Nationally, ready-mix production totalled 4.07 million cubic metres in the year ended June 2017.
At a recent low point (the year ended December 2011), ready-mix production was 2.64 million cubic metres.
Ready-mix concrete production is an indicator of construction activity as it is used in a variety of residential and commercial construction building projects, and for infrastructure and civil construction projects – even farm drainage.
The latest figures follow a 1.6 per cent growth in non-residential building consents for the year ended June 2017, which totaled $6.2 billion.
Over the same period more than 30,000 new homes were consented, up 4.7 per cent from the June 2016 year.
