Background information to drylining sector

Market size

The UK Drylining Sector is worth £2.5b per annum (approx) and is growing at around 5% per annum. It has increasingly replacing wet interior trades in commercial and residential building projects and is playing a significant role in increasing the speed of construction.

Drylining products are more than a partitioning system, they are a flexible design material, carriers for engineering services and, with the improvement in steel frame systems, and they also offer an alternative structural solution for building design.

The market size by volume in 2000 was approximately 200 million sq m. By 2010 it is anticipate the market will be 300 million sq m. UK plasterboard sales, per head of the population, have grown from 3.7 sq m in 2000 to 4.8 sqm in 2005 and there are forecasts that it will hit 5.6 sqm by 2010.  In 2004 the figures for the US and Ireland were 10 sqm and 7 sqm per head respectively so there is considerable scope for growth in the UK markets.

Fascinating facts

• Enough plasterboard is made in the UK every year to cover more than 40,000 premiership
  football pitches
• If all the plasterboard made in the UK every year was stacked up it would make a pile the
  size of an Olympic swimming pool – almost two miles high
• China is already the worlds’ third largest plasterboard market behind the US and Japan
  and is growing at 20% per year.