Increasing demand for steel building materials has been seen in global construction, transport and several industrial sectors.

Nowhere is this more evident than in India and China, where consumption is growing by leaps and bounds, although the latter’s per capita use of metal building materials is far higher than the former’s.

Interestingly, a major component of the demand is not only for steel buildings themselves, but some of the products used within them.

Despite being the steel industry’s youngest alloy in terms of reckoning, stainless or "speciality" steel has seen remarkable growth in popularity, registering record growth over the past quarter of a century.

As a result, global markets have seen a slow rise in steel building prices, although steel remains more economical than most materials.

Reports substantiate this growth, listing it at 5.20 percent in the past year alone. By comparison, commercial steel building products grew, as did other metals — aluminium, copper, zinc and lead - by just 1-3 percent.

While this phenomenal growth is clearly reflected by the figures, an equally remarkable increase of versatility and popularity in the use of stainless steel has been evident in the recent past.

While stainless steel comprises a modest 3 percent of the volume in the general steel building sector, it now contributes a significant 15 percent of the revenue, according to recent statistics.

This gain has been reflected in the recent past, where worldwide metal building product consumption rates have seen record increases.

The year 2006 witnessed a record-level production of stainless steel and heat-resisting crude steel at 28,358 million tons of product, making stainless steel the fastest growing material ever.

The fast-growing Asian region once again showed the strongest increase in metal building activity as well as stainless steel production, accounting for 21 percent of the world’s market in 2006, led by China.