Complete trade portfolio

Gary Thomas, commercial director for Hodgson Sealants, explains how the business has become more market-led on the back of a number of new product launches.

Hodgson Sealants has an illustrious history and is now the UK’s largest independent manufacturer of sealants and related products. The business remains in the Hodgson family and with it holds genuine core values in the way in which they work.

It’s also a business that was one of the founding members of the GGF and is a member of other important industry bodies including the BWF.

Historically, we’ve been a very technically led business, which has been great from an innovation point of view, and this feeds well into our commercially led approach for our product development programme. This means that as part of product and market assessments we look at the potential ROI of project in the short, medium and long-term and as a business that is flexible, we can adapt to market changes and influences quickly from our UK manufacturing facility.

For the last 18 months we’ve consciously made more of a focus and push in the glazing and fenestration sectors, which has been reflected in our attendance at this year’s FIT Show. Few could have missed our super-sized cartridge on the stand, and it will again feature when we go back in May 2020 for our second showing. It proved the perfect platform to launch our new, next generation HY-Spec 25 hybrid sealant, alongside our heritage glazing system for the timber and steel window sector.

Our HY-Spec 25 product is a dedicated sealant for the glazing and fenestration sectors, and is typically more flexible and pliable than a traditional sealants. It’s also fully paintable as visitors to our stand also experienced, and is fully UV stable. So, the white stays white for longer and the new range of colours, including white, black, grey, anthracite grey and brown, have been formulated so they are an exact match to typical PVCU and aluminium frames.

Our product proposition for the trade also includes a number of traditional silicone sealants that have also been formulated so they perform well in the long-term and reflect the high-performance nature of all of our products. We’ve also used our market research to understand what other products our customers would like and so we’ve also launched a gun-applied PU expanding foam, including a cleaner, which is suitable for a wide range of sealing and gap filling applications, including the perimeter of window and door frames. This also provides outstanding thermal insulation and sound reduction properties.

We’ve been long associated with the heritage sector, which is reflected in our popular heritage putty product in white and now black. There is a wide range of heritage glazing solutions and we’ve worked with the likes of EJ Cocker and Son for a number of years in this sector, to develop acceptable specifications and practices.

We’ve also taken the opportunity to expand our product range for the specialist contractor market. Silfix U9 has been a huge success story and now we’ve added Silfix U8 which is CE Marked for facade applications, and Silfix U7, which is a sanitary sealant for bathroom and kitchen applications.

With a more market-led outlook towards our product development process, and a dedicated product manager, we’re quickly building a complete product portfolio for the trade, contractor specialists and the heritage glazing sectors. With a combination of traditional silicones and next generation hybrid sealants in the form of HY-Spec, we’re now looking to become the UK sealant company of choice.