Investing in the future
Unique Window Systems says it has its sights firmly set on the next chapter in an already ‘phenomenal’ success story. Sunil Patel, joint managing director at the business, explains more.
When it comes to Unique’s recent evolution and expansion the facts and figures speak for themselves.
Since 2020, we have seen our turnover almost double, surging from £20.8 million to £39.2 million. During that same period, the size of our team has also grown by 50%, increasing from 200 to 300 people.
These exceptional achievements – which stem from a combination of our entrepreneurial approach and our commitment to offering high quality products backed by equally high levels of service and support – have led to us winning multiple accolades. This includes Outstanding Growth and Business of the Year awards.
It has also given us the ideal platform from which to aim for further success and growth. We have ambitious plans to build on our exceptional track record to date and are already taking action to facilitate this.
As a prime example, we’ve recently made the biggest investment in our nearly 20-year history into a new centre of fabrication excellence for our PVC-U product lines.
This increased production infrastructure will help us to target additional market share and, just as importantly, to uphold our commitment to existing customers.
Unique has built a reputation for being both competitive and responsive, offering attractively priced products on short order lead times. Our new PVC-U facility will help us to maintain that.
Located adjacent to our distribution centre, trade counter, showroom and existing PVC-U, aluminium and coating facilities at our centrally located Leicester site, our new £multi-million PVC-U facility increases our overall footprint by 65,000ft2
It also gives us the capacity to fabricate an impressive 5,000 extra PVC-U frames a week.
Of course, it’s not all about quantity. Quality has always been important to Unique too.
That’s why we’ve used the opening of our new PVC-U facility to not only relocate our current state-of-the-art machinery but also to invest into further cutting-edge technology including two new Schirmer cutting and machining centres and a new Urban SV 800CNC corner cleaner.
The array of plant now at our disposal is helping us to maximise our performance in areas such as production efficiency, waste minimalistion and quality control.
This in turn delivers benefits for our installer partners and for those property owners and occupiers who live with our products on a daily basis.
Enhanced aluminium capabilities
As well as investing into our PVC-U operations, Unique has continued to place equal emphasis on enhancing the aluminium side of our business.
Demonstrating this, our growing range of aluminium products are now fabricated in a newly renovated 45,000ft2 facility that is fully equipped to handle projects with a value of £5 million or more.
Again, as part of this facility’s renovation, we took the opportunity to evaluate our existing set up and to identify where improvements could be made to benefit both our business and the customers we serve.
In effect, the renovation gave us a blank canvas so we could reorganise our fabrication lines and place machinery in the best arrangement to increase efficiency.
This was combined with the implementation of new systems and with steps to ensure improved integration between all areas of our fabrication infrastructure.
The dividends this has delivered have been impressive. It has led to a more efficient way of working that has helped us to increase output, drive out cost and reduce lead times – and all whilst maintaining or improving product quality.
Plus, there will be further investments to come into both our PVC-U and aluminium capabilities.
Unique’s vision for the future entails not only looking outward at what we want to achieve but also looking inward – at what we can improve or refine to strengthen our success and our business offer.
