New Capex Data Analytics from Protel

In this post, we use our new project analytics system to break down the capital expenditure trends across the UK process manufacturing sectors. Get started with your own analysis – subscribe to Protel Analytics.

The analytics service from Protel Associates shows a positive outlook for capital expenditure across the process sectors for 2017.

Protel Analytics is a new online service which provides a range of aggregated data charts based on fully researched capex projects, both planned and under construction. Available data covers the whole of the UK across the main process manufacturing sectors including food & drink, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, onshore gas and process intensive energy generation, as well as data for Ireland across food, drink and pharmaceuticals.

UK capex analysis shows that the general trend in terms of the total value of projects under implementation has been rising steadily from Q1 2013 to date, with a significant level of new projects – currently in the pre-approval planning phases – scheduled to commence during the remainder of 2016 and throughout 2017 (see Chart 1).

Chart 1

In terms of the number of individual projects scheduled for implementation, comparisons between process sectors show chemical, energy and pharmaceutical at similar levels of activity, but over the next four quarters the combined food and drink sectors look to be the most active (see Chart 2). However, when this capex activity is represented in terms of its total value, the picture is somewhat different, with the energy sector head and shoulders above the others (see Chart 3). As one might expect, this is due to a relatively small number of high value projects within the sector.

Chart 2

Chart 3

We can also take a closer look at how projects break down into value bands between the different sectors. For example, if we focus on the food and drink sectors we can see that most projects are tend to fall in the <£5m band with few, if any, valued at over £50m (see Chart 4). This compares with the chemical sector where we see far greater representation in the higher value bands, particularly £5m-£10m and £10m -£25m (see Chart 5).

Chart 4

Chart 5

This is a small sample of the range of graphs available through the Protel Data Analytics portal. Users are able to specify sectors and regions of interest and select date ranges to produce line and bar graphs for aggregated project data at either capex approval or implementation stages. Full details of the individual projects that make up the data are available separately to subscribers of Protel’s Project Bulletin service.

Protel Associates has been identifying and tracking early stage engineering capex projects across the process sectors since 1996 and is currently monitoring around 2,000 active schemes with requirements for new process equipment, systems and associated services. Alongside its successful Project Bulletin service, Protel Data Analytics provides senior sales managers with a powerful tool to identify trends in sector and region activity, giving early stage guidance to set effective sales strategies.

For more details, please get in touch.