Volvo Construction Equipment’s conspicuous absence from World of Concrete 2016 may have raised some concern for the construction equipment industry’s overall health if the Sweden-based heavy-iron company didn’t already have an inconsistent exhibiting record at the concrete show. Volvo derives as much revenue from China as any other world market, and the tapering Chinese economy forced a genuflect even from market leader Caterpillar as early as last September.
But while global stock-market intrigue, revitalized since the first of the year, might have cast a shadow on some exhibitors’ show-floor conversations the first week of February, it scarcely dimmed enthusiasm for domestic construction evident at World of Concrete.
Normally the biggest North American construction trade show in non-Conexpo years, World of Concrete this year offered its biggest exhibition since 2009. More than 1,500 companies filled nearly 744,000 square feet of exhibit space.
Exhibitors came, knowing that a strong dollar, flagging oil industries, and faltering economies in key developing nations such Brazil, Russia and China must inevitably hamper the general U.S. economy’s achingly slow recovery.
The show opened appropriately with discussion of the Portland Cement Association’s forecast for cement consumption in 2016. The association’s November forecast projected a robust 5% increase in consumption of the world’s most-common construction material, but the global malaise had them looking ahead to a milder March reforecast.
Ed Sullivan, PCA vice president and chief economist, assured us that the sky is not, in fact, falling. Instead, it looks like softening of nonresidential building construction’s fervor might diminish the cement-consumption growth expectation to 4% or 4.5%.
Attendance at World of Concrete 2016 added an exclamation point after Sullivan’s “nobody panic!” message. The event exceeded expectations, with attendance growing nearly 8% to 60,110 registered professionals.
