Market Overview

The estimated market size of domestic roofing materials shrank to 84,103,000 square meters (95.1% of the previous fiscal year). According to the Building Starts by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), the decline owed to the negative growth in new housing starts (93.0% of the previous fiscal year) and a slowdown in demand for commercial construction, chiefly warehouses.

Since the roofing materials market is highly dependent on commercial construction starts, such as warehouses, a major metal roofing application, and on housing starts, the market trend is likely to move in tandem with these indicators.

Noteworthy Topics

Acquisition of Roof Remodeling Demand is the Key

Demand for renovating roofing materials is increasing, because of the recent, frequent natural disasters in various parts of Japan and many slate roofing materials in need of being refurbished. Conventional roofing renovations used to generally be repainting, but the cases of “reroofing” (also called an overlay, a construction method of roofing over an existing roof) have increased, considering the renovation frequency, cost, durability, and design.

Future Outlook

The market size of domestic roofing materials is forecast to be 82,340,000 square meters (97.9% of the previous fiscal year). The roofing materials both for detached homes and non-residential constructions are likely to decline.
For detached houses, despite the efforts by roofing material manufacturers to generate roofing renovation demand by appealing the overlay method, decrease in housing starts is affecting heavily. This can also be said for non-residential construction, which faces the downtrend in construction starts for warehouses and factories, major roofing material applications. Manpower shortage is also somewhat involved in the cause of construction works delays.

Research Outline