Industry Analysis & Industry Trends
Despite recessionary conditions in the United Kingdom for several years now, as long as factories, mines and power plants remain open, services to clean them and their equipment are required. The result is that the industry has managed to remain static throughout a prolonged recession, including 0.0% growth during 2011-12.
Cleaning services have benefitted over a period of 10 or 20 years due to the increasing culture of health and safety, which requires that workplaces take greater care in ensuring their sites are well kept and meet their respective industry regulations. Beyond this, the costs for cleaning incurred by companies are effectively fixed - there is little scope for companies to lower their cleaning costs in the face of poor sales... purchase to read more
Industry Report - Industry SWOT Analysis Chapter
As health and safety regulations became a common feature of the UK regulatory landscape over the past two decades, the industrial cleaning sector entered a growth phase, as companies were forced to increase their spend on issues of safety and cleanliness. This opened up new markets and saw many new entrants.
However, since the onset of recession, there has been an increase in consolidation, while profits have fallen. Wage costs are already low compared with other cleaning industries (building cleaning services have wage costs of over 80% of revenue), and there is little scope to lower them without markedly harming service delivery and safety standards.
There are fewer new markets available today, and little likelihood of new ones opening up in the coming years... purchase to read more