Director’s Column – from the Fall 2025 Tennessee Concrete Magazine

What About the Numbers?

Welcome to the summer edition of Tennessee Concrete magazine! This is also our Directory issue. I am pleased to report that TCA continues to add new members at a regular pace. Our total membership is now about 200 organizations that are helping to move the concrete industry forward in our great state.

We are past the halfway point for 2025. Many people expected that by this point in the year, we would have more clarity about the business and construction outlook going forward. But, the key word most are using to describe their future outlook is “Uncertain.” Contractors still report mostly healthy backlogs through 2026. One large contractor recently reported that their backlog is at the highest level ever. On the design side, architects are seeing their backlog of work decrease, especially as you look past the middle of next year. This is worrisome, especially for construction and concrete volumes going into 2027.

We do have some data from the first half of 2025. Here is what the numbers are saying so far. For concrete production in Tennessee, we have cement shipment data through the end of April. At this point our concrete production is running about 10% behind our 2024 production. We continue to see the percentage of production utilizing Type 1L cement increasing, with 95% of cement consumed in Tennessee thus far this year being Type 1L. We know that much of Tennessee experienced unusually high rainfall in the first four months of 2025, so we may see some gradual improvement in the YOY numbers as we get deeper into the construction season.

For residential housing starts we have data through the end of June 2025. As with concrete production, we are seeing a slow down in permit activity year over year compared to 2024 with a 12.2% drop in the number of permits. Market Graphics reports these numbers for five different markets in Tennessee: Nashville (50%), Knoxville (18%), Chattanooga (16%), Memphis (8.5%) and Clarksville (6.5%). The percentages measure the activity in each respective market against total statewide activity. For 2025, all five markets are down compared to 2024 and there are no significant changes in each market's ranking from 2024.

We will continue to track and report these numbers as we move toward the end of 2025, so stay tuned here and on the TCA website (tnconcrete.org).