A concreting business in Australia typically sells for 2x to 4x normalised EBITDA. A sole operator with one truck and a screed rail might walk away with $80K–$120K in goodwill. A commercial concrete contractor with a project pipeline, owned equipment fleet, and a crew of eight might fetch $800K to $2M or more. Those two businesses can generate the same annual turnover — the difference is almost entirely structural.
This guide explains what drives that difference, what the numbers look like across different types of concreting work in 2026, and what you’d need to do to sit at the upper end of the range.
What Concreting Businesses Are Actually Selling For in Australia
The table below reflects current market conditions for concreting businesses with revenue between $500K and $10M. These are goodwill figures — equipment and vehicles sit separately in an asset sale, which is how most trade business sales are structured.
| Business Profile | Normalised EBITDA | Typical Multiple | Indicative Goodwill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner-operator, residential | $80K–$150K | 1.5x–2.5x | $120K–$375K |
| Small commercial, 3–5 crew | $150K–$400K | 2.5x–3.5x | $375K–$1.4M |
| Commercial/civil, 6–15 crew | $400K–$1M+ | 3x–4x | $1.2M–$4M+ |
These numbers assume a clean set of books, transferable client relationships, and a crew likely to stay. Strip any of those three, and the multiple compresses.
Rule of thumb: for a concreting business with 5+ crew and mixed commercial work, expect 2.5x–3.5x normalised EBITDA in goodwill. The equipment sits on top.
The Owner-Operator Gap
This is the largest single variable in any trade business valuation, and concreting is no exception.
A sole operator doing $700K in revenue — good margins, tight operation, equipment owned not leased — might clear $150K EBITDA. On paper, that’s decent. But if the buyer’s question is “what happens when the owner stops turning up to sites?”, and the honest answer is “revenue stops,” then you haven’t got a business — you’ve got a job with a decent hourly rate.
Buyers in the trade acquisition market are paying for transferable, predictable cash flow. They’re not paying for your reputation with three or four residential builders who call your mobile. A one-person concreting business is a job. A five-person business with commercial contracts and documented systems is an asset.
The test is straightforward: if you took three weeks off tomorrow, would revenue continue? If the answer is no, spend time building systems and a team before thinking about selling. The increase in your sale price will likely dwarf what you’d earn in those three weeks.
What Buyers Are Actually Paying For
Plant, Equipment, and Vehicles
Concreting is capital-intensive compared to trades like painting or cleaning. Trucks, concrete pumps, ride-on trowels, bobcats, laser screeds, wet saws — a well-equipped commercial concrete business can carry $500K–$1.5M in plant and equipment. This is value, but it’s valued separately from the business goodwill.
The catch is that buyers distinguish between necessary plant and aging liabilities. A fleet of well-maintained Isuzu FRRs worth $400K adds $400K to your sale price. Three trucks that need engine work and haven’t had proper servicing logs in two years create uncertainty — and uncertainty gets discounted.
Before any sale process, get an independent valuation of your plant and equipment and make sure your maintenance records are current.
Secured Work and Project Pipeline
A concrete contractor with $800K in contracted forward work — a residential subdivision slab package, a commercial tilt-up, a council footpath tender — is a fundamentally different business from one that runs on word of mouth and a phone that rings.
Secured work is the closest thing concreting businesses have to recurring revenue. Buyers want to know what revenue is locked in for the next three to six months before they take over. A documented project pipeline that doesn’t rely on the owner’s personal relationships with the site managers? That’s worth a meaningful premium in the negotiation.
Trade Mix: Residential vs Commercial vs Civil
Not all concreting revenue is valued equally. Residential concreting — driveways, pool surrounds, home slabs — is price-competitive, weather-dependent, and heavily reliant on the owner’s local reputation. Commercial and civil work is stickier.
I came across a concreting business in Queensland last year where the owner had quietly built 30% of his revenue from a civil maintenance contract with a local council. He didn’t think much of it — “just some kerb and gutter work, mate” — but the buyer priced that contract heavily. Predictable government-backed cash flow with a three-year renewal term is exactly what acquirers want; the owner had undersold himself before we got involved.
The rough hierarchy:
- Civil and infrastructure (government contracts, mining services, road construction) — highest multiples
- Commercial (tilt-ups, industrial slabs, multi-res) — strong multiples with documented project history
- Residential (driveways, domestic slabs, landscaping) — lower multiples, more owner-dependent
In Western Australia particularly, exposure to mining infrastructure and government works programs adds a premium that buyers from the eastern states recognise and price in.
Owner Dependency and Your Crew
Buyers in the Australian market for concreting businesses are most commonly:
- Larger construction groups looking to vertically integrate concreting capacity
- Private equity-backed trade roll-ups building a multi-trade business
- Owner-operators looking to scale who want to acquire a larger footprint
All three of these buyers care about one thing above the financials: will the crew stay?
If your five concreters respect and like you, and there’s genuine risk they walk out when you do, the buyer will price that risk directly off the goodwill. An earn-out arrangement is often how this gets resolved — you get a portion of the sale price over 12–24 months as staff retention is confirmed. It can work well, but it delays your clean exit (the topic of earn-outs when selling a business is worth reading before you sign anything).
EBITDA Add-Backs in Concreting Businesses
Owner-operated concreting businesses often run genuine personal expenses through the P&L — vehicles for the owner’s partner, an equipment finance payment that’s half personal, the company phone plan that covers the family. These are legitimate add-backs to normalised EBITDA, and getting them right can shift your valuation materially.
The EBITDA add-backs guide covers this in full. The principle that matters here: buyers are sophisticated and they will interrogate every add-back. A $30K annual “consulting fee” paid to your spouse who doesn’t work in the business will need to be well-supported or it gets thrown out.
Customer Concentration: The Quiet Killer
The fastest way to compress a concreting business multiple is to have one or two clients making up a large proportion of your revenue. A builder client representing 40% of your annual turnover is a concentration risk that buyers discount directly — typically they’ll knock 0.5x–1x off the multiple for every relationship they perceive as fragile.
This matters more in concreting than many trade businesses because project work tends to be lumpy. A big residential subdivision can distort your revenue picture. The fix is to diversify your client base before you start a sale process — even if it means taking on lower-margin commercial work to broaden the spread. The customer concentration guide explains the thresholds buyers typically apply.
What Drives Your Multiple Up
If you’re planning a sale in the next two to four years, these are the levers worth pulling:
- Document your systems — quoting templates, site management procedures, safety records, subcontractor agreements. The less institutional knowledge lives only in your head, the higher your multiple.
- Formalise client relationships — convert informal builder arrangements into written subcontract agreements or preferred supplier arrangements.
- Build a pipeline that outlasts you — secure forward work through tenders, framework agreements, or long-term commercial retainers.
- Clean up the equipment — maintained records, current registrations, and up-to-date valuations remove uncertainty from the buyer’s due diligence.
- Reduce owner time on tools — every hour you spend pouring concrete is an hour you’re not building a transferable business. Bring in a leading hand or operations manager early.
For a broader view of what buyers look for across trade businesses, the selling a trade business guide covers the full acquisition process.
Is Now a Good Time to Sell?
The Australian construction market is coming off a significant infrastructure and residential build cycle. Government infrastructure spending — particularly in WA, QLD, and NSW — has created sustained demand for commercial and civil concreting capacity, and that’s pushed acquisition interest from larger groups. Buyer appetite for well-run trade businesses with experienced crews remains strong.
The counterbalance is cost pressure: materials, fuel, and labour costs have all risen since 2021, which has squeezed margins for businesses that haven’t adjusted their pricing. If your EBITDA has been compressed in the last two years, it’s worth understanding how buyers will normalise that before you take a number to market.
Getting Started
If you want a realistic sense of what your concreting business might fetch, start with a free business valuation estimate or get in touch directly. Miro Capital works with trade and construction business owners across Australia — and we’ll give you a straight answer, not a number designed to get you to sign an engagement letter.
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