Rob Brearley, group managing director of the Glazerite UK Group, shares why the leading trade fabricator’s Yorkshire expansion has helped open more doors for installers.

2023 was a big year for Glazerite and our installers. We added a new profile system to our range in the shape of Deceuninck, and we unveiled plans to open a new site.

Both announcements were underpinned by nearly £1million of key investments across the other four sites in our Group, with new machinery installed to grow capacity and improve accuracy, quality and flexibility across our operations. Meanwhile new vehicles were added to our fleet to enhance our delivery capability.

It’s now been a year since we announced plans to expand our footprint into Yorkshire, with the launch of our North Division in the historic market town of Barnsley. With a heritage rich in coal and glass making, it was the transport links and existing skills base that made it the perfect location for us.

We chose to open our site in Darton, which is close to the M1 and M62, and was already home to skilled fenestration employees who had been affected by the Safestyle site closure in nearby Wombwell. By dedicating the Barnsley operations to the exclusive fabrication of our recently welcomed Deceuninck range, it was also an opportunity for us to be able to offer installers in the region a greater choice of profile systems.

Thanks to our hardworking and dedicated team, it took just under three months for us to turn an empty shell of a building into a fully functioning 30,000ft2 site, launching first with Deceuninck 2800 casement, tilt & turn windows and residential and French doors, followed by Deceuninck 2500.

Now, to complement the range and give our installers more choice, we’ve added the Deceuninck sliding patio door and triple track. Like the rest of the Deceuninck portfolio, the patio is a stand out door renowned for its aesthetics, innovation, and energy and weather performance, as well as its strength and security.

It is a welcome addition to the portfolio and underlines our commitment to giving our installers and their own customers a wide range of solutions to choose from, whatever their end market or budget.

Our Barnsley workforce, like the rest of the Group’s employees, is driven by the need to deliver consistently high-quality windows and doors for our installers and help them maintain their reputation amongst their own customer bases.

Having a choice of high quality products from a reliable supplier is critical for our installers, such as Abigail Adams, who runs Berwick-on-Tweed based Northumberland Glass. She recently took receipt of some stunning Deceuninck 2800 casements in cream (pictured) from our Barnsley site for a Seahouses holiday let renovation called ‘The Gin Gan’, and is delighted at the variety of profile systems on offer from Glazerite.

Like the rest of our operational sites, Barnsley is run with lean manufacturing principles. Headed up by Darren Rhodes and Darryl Count, the site is focused on efficiency and continuous improvement.

Communication is paramount across the group to ensure we meet our commitments to installers and get our frames out on time and to the highest quality. To achieve that, it is essential that our teams are all on the same page. At Barnsley, just as at our sites in Bolton, Peterborough and Wellingborough, all of our teams share ideas on where we can make improvements, from shopfloor organisation to enhancing stock control and reducing waste for streamlined efficiencies.

Our Barnsley team members are passionate about getting fabrication right first time and meet daily to discuss plans, production, orders, stock, issues and quality. They, like the rest of the Glazerite UK Group, are fully focused on helping our installer partners achieve their own goals.

To do that today and longer term, we want to ensure our installers continue to have access to one of the broadest product portfolios in the industry, alongside added value solutions like marketing and technical advice.

By growing our footprint and portfolio with the opening of our Barnsley site and the addition of Deceuninck, we can ensure we continue to offer quality products, consistent customer service and a reliable delivery network, wherever our installers are.