A rare site has appeared in recent days in the village of Manilva. A crane!
No, they are not building any new houses, they are working on a new “plaza” in the village, but these famous cranes used to litter the entire coastline. It was very strange to see one again, a few years ago you couldn’t drive one kilometre without seeing one. They became part of the landscape, a sign of a truly booming economy.
Today they are a rare site, apart from the few abandoned ones you see now and then.
But this one in the village today got me thinking about all the people behind the construction boom. We tend to think of developers and labourers as being the ones most affected, but the impact goes so much deeper than this.
A few years ago you would see lorry after lorry pounding the roads taking rubble away from construction sites. You’d see lorries bringing doors, windows, bathroom supplies and everything else that a property needs.
All the different service and manufacturing companies servicing the new developments have all massively suffered from the crash causing the current unprecedented levels of unemployment in the country.
Off the top of my head here are some of the types of companies which have been adversely affected by the crash (and yes, they will have done incredibly well out of the boom in the first place):
1. Cement manufactures
2. Brick manufacturers
3. Doors and windows manufactures
4. Bathroom sinks/baths/bide/taps manufacturers and suppliers
5. Kitchen manufacturers and suppliers
6. White goods manufacturers and suppliers
7. Crane manufacturers and servicing
8. Lorry manufacturers, importers, servicing companies, parts
suppliers, lorry drivers
9. Air conditioning manufacturers and importers
10. General construction equipment suppliers
11. Sign makers and advertising billboard suppliers
12. Brochure printers and graphic designers
13. Garden plant/ trees growers and suppliers
14. Plumbing equipment suppliers
15. Electrical equipment suppliers
16. Tile manufacturers and suppliers
17. Furniture manufacturers and suppliers
18. Garage doors manufacturers and suppliers
19. Lights manufacturers and suppliers
20. Post box manufacturers and suppliers
OK, I’ll stop now but when you start to think about all the different types of businesses that were growing in line with the construction boom, and employing more and more people, it does make you start to realise just how many different related industries have suffered with the collapse of the property market.
And where on Earth are all those hundreds of thousands of now unemployed people working in these different sectors going to find jobs now?
It’s a scary thought.