Focus on ‘colour’ and ‘energy efficiency’, and you can’t go too far wrong as the market demands shift, according to Aluplast’s director of sales and marketing Ian Cocken.

It isn’t easy to predict how homeowner confidence is going to react to the economic challenges that have developed over the course of 2022, Ian Cocken, Aluplast’s director of sales and marketing believes.

“While soaring interest rates have deterred many people from buying a new home – dampening the housing market in the process – it isn’t clear if homeowners will turn to home improvement instead,” he says. “And there are worries that a potential fall in property values will put people off from improving their homes due to a perceived low return on investment.”

But significant trends did emerge during 2022, and this is where the smart money is looking to invest, Cocken argues.

“According to the monthly Business Pilot Barometer, leads declined during 2022,” he says. “But these were more than offset by the increase in average order value. This is because people were investing in whole house refurbishments or choosing higher value products, or a combination of the two.

“This chimes with the demand experienced by our fabricators, who saw more flush casements leaving their factories, either on traditional properties, or on modern developments.”

Aluplast’s flush casement is compatible with both its fully sculptured Ideal 70 and SquareLine Ideal 4000 systems, giving fabricators access to heritage and contemporary projects while keeping extra stockholding to a minimum.

It has also been joined recently by a flush door that allows window companies sell a flush appearance across all elements of a refurbishment, including French Doors and open-out entrance doors.

“And while that flush appearance has grown in popularity over the course of the last 10 to 15 years, we’ve won a significant amount of new business over the two years because we can offer colour in a reasonable time frame, whereas other systems companies limited their supplies to cope with peaks in demand,” Cocken says.

With a range of 40 different finishes, including the next generation Woodec and Aludec foils, Aluplast has invested significantly in its foil offer. This has allowed it to maintain a strong supply of its most popular stock colours, with foiled product accounting for as much as 50% of total order volume.

“But the popularity of colour isn’t just down to aesthetics,” Cocken continues. “Colour choice, we’ve found, is also closely linked to energy efficiency, especially in those instances where homeowners want the aluminium look, but with better energy performance.

“Home improvement projects tend to be carried out by wealthier homeowners who aren’t as affected by the cost-of-living crisis as others, but the soaring cost of energy is encouraging people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes where they can.”

Both the Ideal 70 and Ideal 4000 systems achieve A++ WERs, and U-values as low as 1.2W/m²K, which mean they comfortably meet the levels set out in the revised Part L of the Building Regulations.

Combined with Aluplast’s Aludec foils – which deliver a step-change in PVC-U foiling technology, more accurately replicating not only the appearance but the touch of aluminium, including textured and smooth options – homeowners can achieve a high-end aluminium appearance, while benefiting from the thermal performance of PVC-U.

“And the same goes for sliding doors,” Cocken points out. “Again, large-span aluminium doors became popular home improvement methods as homeowners sought to increase the light and space in their properties following the coronavirus pandemic.

“But many aluminium systems struggle to meet the new Part L requirements, while many PVC-U sliders struggle to meet the desired wide spans. As a result, our new Smart-Slide sliding door achieves both of these requirements, while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with aluminium alternatives thanks to the Aludec foil.”

Capable of spanning openings of 5m x 2.4m with just two sashes, the Aluplast Smart-Slide door delivers impressive design flexibility. This includes uninterrupted sightlines as standard, effortless operation, and the all-important DER of A+ which makes it an attractive energy-efficient alternative to aluminium.

“It’s not clear how the home improvement industry is going to respond to a turbulent economy going into 2023, but we can be fairly certain that colour is going to feature heavily in homeowners’ decision-making process,” Cocken concludes.