Do we need another systems company?

Mark Hanson, marketing manager at Kawneer, looks at the overlap between commercial and domestic aluminium sectors and outlines why he thinks the market needs another systems company.

Kawneer has a strong reputation in the commercial sector, having been established in the UK for over 50 years.

But what exactly do we mean by ‘commercial sector’? As well as the building types we would all understand as commercial buildings, like offices, it includes education and health sectors, which have always been a mainstay of our sales mix. However, over the last few years ‘residential’ has come to the forefront as a major new sector.

Typically this is ‘housing’ in a number of formats, namely: student accommodation, apartments to rent, and apartments to buy.

This type of residential development now represents 50% of Kawneer’s order pipeline and all three types of housing have one thing in common: they are all generally high rise (20 storey plus) and are being built in our main cities. In fact, they are adding significantly to the housing stock at a time when housing supply has been suppressed, and yet demand is high and rising.

Kawneer’s product range is being used extensively in these apartments and consumers like the features of the windows and doors in these homes. Increasingly, Kawneer’s existing dealer base is getting involved in low rise residential too, as the product solutions are often common to both high and low rise.

Increasingly, Kawneer is working closely with a number of ‘trade and residential’ fabricators who have wanted to work with a systems company who is not overexposed in the market, someone with a small and loyal network and who treats each fabricator as a partner rather than simply a customer. Can you say that about your existing aluminium systems company?

Other key reasons why Kawneer could be your ideal partner relates to the fact we have end-to-end control of the supply chain from incoming aluminium billet, through to extrusion, insertion of thermal breaks and powder coating, all in its own factory in north west England.

Kawneer is also committed to supporting the dealer network from the initial design stage through to installation on site. The network is supported by a large team of design/technical staff all based at its head office in Runcorn – the latest ‘aid’ to arrive was a £35K rapid prototype machine (also known as a 3D printer) to speed up the design process and aid ‘proof of concept’ for bespoke project solutions.

Add to this our ability to design custom profiles for fabricators and to extrude/roll lengths optimised to minimise waste and you can see why Kawneer’s fabricator customers enjoy a significant advantage.

As well as the residential products you would expect, such as window suites of various depths, bifolding doors, lift-slides and patios, the company offers vertical and horizontal sliding windows; in development is a flush sash casement window in two forms.

Add in an integral juliet balcony solution to the AA720 window system and you can really start to gain an impression that here is a company founded on innovation and which is going places. In fact, we started in 1906 in the mid-west of America when Kawneer produced the first drawn metal copper shopfront. To this day, we honour our roots as shopfronts are still an important market for Kawneer, as our AA100 system – including heavy duty entrance doors – were specified for 80 high end retail stores at the O2 Arena urban outlet mall in London.