Phenomenal Growth Rate for Pre-engineered Steel & Metal Buildings in Future

The increasing popularity of PEB systems in the industrial sector and the development of infrastructure have propelled the Indian pre-engineered steel buildings market to experience robust growth. Sectors including power, logistics, automotive, pharma, FMCG and capital goods offer huge growth opportunity for PEB in India. In 2011, the structural steel buildings market in India was around 5 to 5.5 million, of which around 9.5 to 10% accounted for the PEB market in India. It's expected that the market in terms of volumes will reach 9,00,000 MT by 2016, at CAGR of 11.2%.

Here the key challenges include enhancing cost and shortage of skilled manpower, presence of alternative building structure (includes steel and concrete) and fluctuating raw material prices which account for 55 to 60% of the total cost. These will undoubtedly affect the price trend and impact the profit margin of the supplier in the long run as competition increases. One can directly attribute these challenges to the lower penetration of PEB in India. Investments and growth in the industrial and commercial sectors is directly associated with the PEB market. A study says that in the next few years, the new potential application areas for PEB will include power plant structures, commercial buildings (retail malls & offices), factory buildings, warehouses and metro stations.

By 2030, the commercial building sector in India is estimated to reach a target of 20.44 billion square feet from the current 10 billion square feet. It's expected that nearly 36% of the 2030 target had already been constructed and about 66% of the building stock is yet to be constructed. In the last few years, with manufacturing activity increasing, logistics has gained equal prominence in order to offer better goods at lesser cost. One can also observe that India has around 8000 cold storage facilities with a capacity of 40MT. The addition in capacity to the cold store and warehousing would also trigger the PEB market in India.

In the next 10 years the scope for pre-engineered metal & steel buildings is immense, with the beginning and speedy progress of the Metro rail system. Upsurge in technical competence plays a pivotal role as well and several market participants have introduced high grade steel conforming to ASTM Grade 50 steel without compromising on the quality of the product, which attracted several customers to pay high prices for quality jobs. More emphasis given on green building construction is also poised to push market expansion. For example, to enhance the efficiency of energy, several PEB manufacturers have developed windows with high efficiency and insulation for walls, roofs, ceilings & floors. Daylight and captive power requirements would be met with the use of sky lights and solar panels on rooftops, while, at the same time, lessening emissions and gaining carbon credits under clean development mechanism (CDM).

Several leading domestic and international market participants are increasingly exploring for opportunities by adopting multiple business strategies such as venturing into project contracting, engineering design, manufacturing heavy structural steel buildings, and focusing on vertical integration whereas strategy related to merger & acquisition will support them to grow inorganically and let them broaden their product portfolios and geographic reach.

Sunil Srivastava is a Business Partner at New Life Steel Structures, a leading organization having expertise into the manufacturing of prefabricated steel structure.