35% of Metal Components Are Now Being Replaced by FRP. Here Is the "Why Now" Case.
Nearly 35% of traditional metal components in industrial applications are now being replaced by FRP. Corrosion resistance is the single largest driver of that shift, accounting for 40% of the demand behind it. This is not a future trend. It is happening now, across the infrastructure being specified and built today. Here is why, and what it means for anyone still defaulting to steel.
Published by Reinforce Technology | June 2026
For most of the last century, the choice of structural and secondary infrastructure material in industrial and construction applications was barely a choice at all. Steel, galvanised where corrosion was a consideration, was the default. It was familiar, well understood, backed by decades of design codes and fabrication standards, and available from an established global supply chain. The alternative materials that existed, stainless steel, aluminium, were specified only where steel's limitations were severe enough to justify their additional cost.
That default is shifting, and the data shows it is shifting at scale. Market analysis published in late 2025 found that nearly 35% of traditional metal components across industrial applications are now being replaced by FRP solutions, with corrosion resistance demand identified as the largest single driver at 40%, ahead of lightweight substitution at 30%, infrastructure usage at 33%, and industrial durability requirements at 22% (Global Growth Insights, 2025). The global FRP composites market reached approximately £83 billion in 2026 and is projected to grow to £107 billion by 2031 at a compound annual growth rate of 5.2%, with the expansion explicitly linked to bridge and infrastructure rehabilitation, offshore wind installation, and the broader shift toward materials that perform across longer asset lives without the maintenance burden that metals accumulate (Mordor Intelligence, 2026).
This is the "why now" question that matters for anyone making material specification decisions on infrastructure in 2026. FRP has existed as an alternative to steel and aluminium for decades. What has changed is not the material. It is the economics, the data, and the regulatory environment surrounding the decision to specify it. This article sets out what has changed, why it has changed now, and what it means for the default assumption that steel remains the safe choice.
The Cost of Corrosion Has Become Impossible to Ignore
The single largest factor behind the shift from metal to FRP is corrosion, and the reason it has become decisive now rather than twenty years ago is that the cost of corrosion has become measurable in a way it previously was not. The NACE International IMPACT study, the most comprehensive global assessment of corrosion costs ever conducted, estimated the global annual cost of corrosion at approximately £2 trillion, equivalent to 3.4% of global GDP (NACE International, 2016). That figure was not available in this form a generation ago. It exists now because infrastructure owners, governments, and industry bodies have spent the last two decades building the asset management systems, maintenance records, and lifecycle databases that make corrosion's true cost visible.
What that visibility has revealed is that the purchase price comparison between steel and FRP, the comparison that has driven specification decisions for decades, was answering the wrong question. A galvanised steel cable tray costs less to buy than an equivalent FRP cable tray. But across a 25 to 30-year asset life in a corrosive environment, the steel installation requires inspection, recoating, and eventual structural replacement, each of which consumes materials, labour, and access to live operational zones that the FRP installation never requires. The IMPACT study and the lifecycle cost analyses that have followed it, including peer-reviewed work finding approximately 50% lifecycle cost savings for GFRP versus steel over a 100-year study period, have made that total cost visible and comparable for the first time (Younis, Ebead and Judd, 2018).
Once that total cost is visible, the specification decision changes. This is the mechanism behind the 40% of FRP demand growth attributed to corrosion resistance. It is not that corrosion has become a new problem. It is that the cost of the old problem has become a number that procurement teams, asset owners, and project financiers can see, compare, and act on.
The Asset Life Mismatch That Steel Cannot Solve
Modern infrastructure is increasingly specified and financed against 30 to 50-year operational horizons. Solar farms financed on 25 to 30-year power purchase agreements. Water treatment works designed for 50-year service lives. Offshore wind platforms with 25-year design lives in the most aggressive marine environment in UK infrastructure. Data centres with 25-year operational models. Grid infrastructure expected to perform for 40 to 50 years.
Galvanised steel, in the environments these assets occupy, does not match those horizons. The zinc coating that provides corrosion protection on galvanised steel is a sacrificial layer that depletes over time, failing first at the cut edges, fixing points, and connection interfaces created during installation, precisely the locations of greatest structural importance. In coastal, chemical, agricultural, and humid environments, that depletion can produce structurally significant corrosion within 10 to 15 years, sometimes faster in the most aggressive conditions. An asset financed on a 30-year horizon, with secondary infrastructure that requires structural intervention at year 12, has a mismatch between its financial model and its physical reality that the financial model did not account for.
FRP in the correct resin system for its specific environment has a design life that consistently meets or exceeds 50 years without the corrosion mechanism that drives steel's degradation. This is not a marginal improvement on steel's performance. It is a different category of performance, one where the material's design life and the asset's financial horizon are the same number, rather than the material requiring intervention partway through the asset's intended life. As more infrastructure is financed against long horizons, in IntechOpen's analysis of FRP applications in civil engineering, this alignment between material design life and asset financial life becomes the decisive factor (IntechOpen, 2022).
Why the Manufacturing Process Now Favours FRP
Steel production from raw ore requires temperatures above 1,500°C and generates significant emissions at every stage from extraction through smelting to fabrication. FRP manufactured through pultrusion operates at under 200°C using electrically powered polymerisation. A peer-reviewed lifecycle assessment published on ScienceDirect in 2025 found that pultruded glass fibre reinforced polymer produces approximately 60 to 70% less CO₂ per tonne than primary steel production on a cradle-to-gate basis (ScienceDirect, 2025).
This manufacturing emissions gap has existed for as long as both materials have existed. What has changed is that it now matters in a way it did not before. The UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard, launched in March 2026, requires embodied carbon to be documented across new construction. Carbon pricing mechanisms across multiple markets are beginning to reflect the manufacturing emissions of high-carbon materials in their cost. Investor ESG assessments increasingly require documented embodied carbon data as part of asset evaluation. A manufacturing emissions advantage that was previously an environmental footnote is now a documented, reportable, and in some contexts directly costed factor in the specification decision.
The same ScienceDirect review is honest about the limitations that remain, noting that recycling challenges persist and that the circular economy dimension of FRP lifecycle assessment remains underexplored (ScienceDirect, 2025). That honesty matters. The case for FRP over steel on manufacturing emissions is strong and documented. The case is not yet complete at end of life, and the composites industry is actively working on closing that gap through thermoplastic systems and improved fibre recovery processes. The "why now" case for FRP rests on the parts of the lifecycle where the evidence is strongest: manufacturing emissions, operational maintenance, and asset life alignment.
The Manufacturing and Supply Chain Maturity That Wasn't There Before
One of the historical barriers to FRP adoption was cost, driven by the specialised equipment, raw material sourcing, and skilled labour that FRP manufacturing required relative to the highly standardised, globally scaled steel supply chain (Research and Markets, 2025). That barrier has been eroding as the FRP manufacturing base has scaled. Pultrusion, the manufacturing process used for the majority of structural FRP profiles, cable trays, and grating, has become more automated, more standardised, and more cost-competitive as production volumes have grown in response to the demand growth in construction, wind energy, and infrastructure applications.
The price premium of FRP over galvanised steel for equivalent secondary infrastructure products has narrowed from the multiples that characterised the technology's early adoption to the 1.5x to 2x range that is now typical. Against a total project cost where secondary infrastructure is a small fraction of the overall budget, and against a lifecycle cost comparison where FRP's maintenance-free profile eliminates the largest cost category steel generates, that narrowed premium changes the arithmetic of the specification decision decisively.
Where the 35% Substitution Is Happening
The market data on FRP substitution is not evenly distributed. Construction and infrastructure applications account for approximately a third of the substitution activity, reflecting the secondary infrastructure applications, cable management, grating, structural profiles, fencing, where FRP's corrosion resistance and non-conductivity provide the clearest advantages over steel in outdoor, chemical, and electrically sensitive environments (Global Growth Insights, 2025). Wind energy, both onshore and offshore, is a significant and growing application area, reflecting the marine corrosion environment of offshore platforms and the long, maintenance-constrained operational horizons of wind assets. Automotive applications, driven by lightweighting requirements for electric vehicles, represent a substantial share, though the specific FRP formulations and applications differ significantly from the infrastructure-grade structural profiles and cable management that dominate construction use.
For the UK specifically, the substitution activity concentrates in exactly the sectors where the country's infrastructure investment is heaviest: energy generation and grid infrastructure, water treatment, data centres, and transport. These are the sectors where long asset lives, demanding environments, and constrained maintenance access combine to make the corrosion resistance, non-conductivity, and maintenance-free profile of FRP most directly valuable, and where the 35% substitution figure is most visibly playing out in real specification decisions.
What This Means for the Default to Steel
The default to steel in secondary infrastructure specification has historically been a low-risk decision in the narrow sense that steel is familiar, well understood, and unlikely to raise questions in a procurement review. What the market data on FRP substitution shows is that this framing of risk has become inverted. In the environments where corrosion, non-conductivity, and long asset life matter, the decision that now carries the higher risk of an unexamined assumption is the default to steel, not the decision to specify FRP.
A 35% substitution rate across industrial applications, growing at a market rate of 5.2% annually toward £107 billion by 2031, is not a niche trend. It reflects a broad, ongoing reassessment across multiple industries of where steel's familiarity is actually delivering value and where it is simply the answer that nobody questioned. For infrastructure being specified now, with operational horizons extending into the 2050s, the cost of not asking that question compounds for every year of the asset's life that follows.
The "why now" case for FRP is not a single factor. It is the simultaneous maturity of the lifecycle cost evidence, the alignment of material design life with modern asset financing horizons, the documentation requirements that the embodied carbon regulatory environment now demands, and the narrowing of the manufacturing cost gap that historically limited adoption. Each of these factors existed in some form a decade ago. None of them had reached the threshold where they decisively changed the specification conversation. Collectively, in 2026, they have.
Reinforce Technology FRP Products
Reinforce Technology supplies FRP structural profiles, cable trays, grating, solar frames, perimeter fencing, and drainage systems for infrastructure applications across the UK and internationally. Our products are available in polyester, vinyl ester, and epoxy resin systems matched to the specific environmental requirements of each application, with documented lifecycle and embodied carbon data to support specification decisions.
We work with structural engineers, procurement teams, EPC contractors, and asset managers across energy, water, transport, data centre, and industrial sectors. Contact us to discuss your project and whether FRP is the right specification for your secondary infrastructure application.
Final confirmation of material suitability for any specific application remains the responsibility of the appointed project engineer. Reinforce Technology provides technical guidance and material recommendations based on information supplied to us, but specification sign-off should always sit with the qualified professional responsible for the design.
References
Global Growth Insights (2025) Fiber Reinforced Plastics (FRP) Market Size and Demand Analysis by 2035. Available at: https://www.globalgrowthinsights.com/market-reports/fiber-reinforced-plastics-frp-market-121918 [Accessed: June 2026]. [35% of traditional metal components replaced by FRP; corrosion resistance demand 40%, infrastructure usage 33%, lightweight substitution 30%, industrial durability 22%].
IntechOpen (2022) 'Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) in Civil Engineering', in IntechOpen Engineering Series. Available at: https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/84203 [Accessed: June 2026].
Mordor Intelligence (2026) Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites Market Size and Growth Trends 2031. Available at: https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/fiber-reinforced-polymer-frp-composites-market [Accessed: June 2026]. [Global FRP composites market £83.17bn in 2026, projected £107.16bn by 2031 at 5.2% CAGR; growth linked to bridge rehabilitation and offshore wind].
NACE International (2016) International Measures of Prevention, Application and Economics of Corrosion Technology (IMPACT). Houston, TX: NACE International. Available at: http://impact.nace.org/economic-impact.aspx [Accessed: June 2026]. [Global annual cost of corrosion approximately £2 trillion, 3.4% of global GDP].
Research and Markets (2025) Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Composites Market, Forecasts from 2025 to 2030. Available at: https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5547603/fiber-reinforced-polymer-frp-composites [Accessed: June 2026]. [High production costs and specialised equipment requirements historically limited FRP adoption versus steel and aluminium].
ScienceDirect (2025) 'Sustainable composites for metal replacement: Environmental assessment and material selection of fiber-reinforced polymer across industries', ScienceDirect, doi: 10.1016/S2667-3789(25)00051-3. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667378925000513 [Accessed: June 2026]. [Pultruded GFRP cradle-to-gate emissions approximately 60-70% lower per tonne than primary steel; recycling challenges and circular economy dimension remain underexplored].
Younis, A., Ebead, U. and Judd, S. (2018) 'Life cycle cost analysis of structural concrete using seawater, recycled concrete aggregate, and GFRP reinforcement', Construction and Building Materials, 175, pp. 135-144. doi: 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2018.04.183. [Approximately 50% lifecycle cost saving for GFRP versus steel over 100-year study period].
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