D&Ri 100 2007: World's largest demolition companies

D&Ri has made its largest ever effort to directly contact the world's leading demolition companies to ask them to supply their data as part of the compilation of this year's d&ri100 ranking of the leading players. This has resulted in a number of companies appearing in our ranking for the very first time.

As always, the resulting list is the combination of company-provided and independently sourced data.

While we specifically ask respondents to exclude any revenue from non–demolition recycling activities, we accept that some may not have been able to do so. Every effort has been made to confirm the financial results reported to us, but in some instances this has not been possible.

And so to this year's d&ri100. The additional effort we went to in contacting companies with regard to their 2006 annual turnover has resulted in 21 new companies appearing in the 2007 d&ri100. While normally new companies find their way onto the list somewhere from the middle and down, this year a major new player has found its way onto the table, and broken the stranglehold on the top five positions that in the past has been held by US contractors. Keltbray, a UK contractor based in London, has jumped straight into the number two position with a total annual turnover of US$150 million. Mind you, a French contractor has almost managed to match this performance. Demokrite, based in Nantes, appears for the first time in the number seven slot with a 2006 turnover of US$89 million.

It is important to note at this point that the relative strength of the Euro and UK pound against the US dollar has favoured demolition contractors from these areas in this year's ranking. Take Keltbray as an example – using the exchange rate applicable at the time of the 2006 listing, it would have appeared further down the list, albeit still up there at number 5. We plan to investigate the possibility of using an alternative method of ranking that would eliminate or reduce the impact of currency fluctuations for next year's listing.

Nevertheless, this does not detract from European contractors' overall performance. Those who featured in the last year's ranking, almost without exception, reported improved results for 2006 against 2005, proving that the demolition recycling sector in Europe is currently a buoyant one.

The combined turnover total for this year's listing comes in at US$3,703 million, up almost 35 % on last year's equivalent figure of US$2,701 million. The top 50 in the list contributed 3,009 million, or just over 81 % of the total, while the top 10 contributed a wacking 1,238 million between them, or 34 % of the total. The bottom 50 contributed total turnovers of 695 million, or just under 19%.

And the cut–off for inclusion has more than doubled. Last year, the lowe.st turnover included in the top 100 was US$3.6 million, while this year the lowest, US Two Rivers Demolition, comes in with a turnover of US$7.3 million.

Forty contractors on the list are from north America – four from Canada and the rest from the USA – with a total turnover of 1,718 million, 46.5 % of the total. This percentage is down on last year, when the equivalent value was 57.5%. However, given the number of new companies on the list resulting from our greater drive to obtain data, it would be unreasonable to draw any definitive conclusions as to market trends.

Fifty six European contractors have made it onto this year's list, contributing 1,866 million to the total (just over 50% – up from last year's 39.6%). While again the number of new companies in this year's list make it difficult to draw sold conclusions, last year's straight company average of US20.8 million annual turnover in Europe has increased to US33.3 million.

Unfortunately, our increased information gathering effort has resulted in fewer contractors, just four in all, from outside North America and Europe appearing in the listing, down from last year's nine. We had hoped to obtain a better response from contractors in the rest of the world, and obtaining relevant financial data through the independent services we use has proved difficult, to say the least.

I would like to encourage readers in companies in these regions to respond to next year's mailing, which will again be carried out with increased energy.