By Jake Green, General Manager
Looking back on 2025, the biggest industry shift we’ve seen is Aerated Autoclaved Concrete (AAC) finally becoming a truly mainstream building material. It’s felt like an overnight success 30 years in the making and as a pioneer in this space, our team could not be more excited. There has been a strong move away from rendered brick and toward rendered AAC systems, with builders embracing the performance, efficiency and certainty the material offers.
At the same time, many tier 1 and 2 builders have moved back toward single-supplier models. After COVID, many builders adopted a “spread the risk” mindset, splitting work across multiple suppliers, however many of our clients new and old have reversed this trend in order to secure stability across pricing, supply and service with Maaken and build genuine partnerships.
Builders are valuing consistency and streamlined delivery over juggling too many touchpoints, which means they’re prioritising dependable end-to-end providers like Maaken. It’s been one of the most positive corrections in the market.
A transformative year for Maaken
Internally, 2025 was a landmark year. Two major IT upgrades reshaped how we operate and strengthened the support we offer builders.
- Our subcontractor portal replaced traditional invoicing, allowing subcontractors to submit jobs directly for faster approval and payment.
- Our quoting and CRM overhaul has dramatically improved enquiry management and quoting speed, building on our already strong turnaround times.
These were major undertakings, and the entire team, especially our Managing Director Alysha Dew, played a crucial role in delivering them successfully. The result is a smarter, more efficient system that gives builders confidence and supports our long-term growth.
Why AAC and high-performance materials surged in 2025
In our opinion, a few major forces converged this year.
- Building code changes increased the emphasis on fire performance and acoustic standards. AAC’s fire ratings, thermal stability and acoustic insulation made it a clear choice over products like shaft liner and mag board.
- Sustainability expectations continued to rise, and AAC’s environmental profile and energy-efficiency credentials aligned strongly with long term goals of developers.
- Supply-chain certainty became a top priority. Multi-year agreements between Maaken and builders have allowed us to lock in stable pricing and delivery—bringing reliability in a challenging market.
A tough, transitional market
This has been one of the most difficult operating environments in decades. Regulatory red tape continues to increase, labour shortages remain severe, and demand fluctuated significantly throughout the year.
While material prices have stabilised slightly, labour availability remained the main constraint to many our clients throughout the industry and government attempts to address it or make it easier for providers like Maaken to make change in this area have been slow and prohibitive. However, Maaken remains an industry leader in the recruitment space and our innovative and forward-thinking recruitment programs mean we are staying ahead of the curve on this front.
This is where reliable service providers matter. Builders need partners who reduce complexity and bring certainty to timelines, budgets and delivery. That’s where we’ve focused our energy.
What we expect in 2026
Olympic related construction is set to keep pulling labour into major infrastructure and commercial projects, meaning more pressure on the residential sector.
QMCA forecasts show labour demand for large projects climbing from about 26,000 workers in FY26 to nearly 41,000 by FY30, fuelled by infrastructure, engineering and Olympic works. Their 2023–2025 pipeline data also point to sharp growth in demand for labour, materials and plant across every sector, intensifying competition.
With resources stretched, builders will increasingly turn to trusted solution providers to fill capability gaps and keep delivery scalable and reliable.
We’re also bringing several new clients online early in the year—strengthening collaboration and driving further adoption of high-performance wall systems like AAC.
If we had to sum up 2025, it was a challenging year of transition for many. But it reinforced that hard work, strong partnerships and smarter systems are the things that carry the industry forward.
