Andy Holland, technical & marketing manager at Rapierstar highlights why, despite being by far the lowest cost and smallest components used in windows and doors, fasteners ultimately determine how well the finished units will perform in situ and, hence, their whole life costs.

The performance capabilities offered by today’s advanced window and door systems, glass and hardware help to create warmer, safer and more energy efficient and secure homes.

But for all of these great products to deliver on their promise, the fasteners needed to hold windows and doors together and ensure they stay securely in place during their lifetime have to be equally well designed and made.

While fasteners may not always be top of the priority list when considering window and door specifications, their performance is coming under increasing scrutiny as fabricators, installers and end-users focus on any weaknesses that could undermine the success of their fenestration projects.

This is something our team can assist with, particularly in respect of which grades of metal would be most appropriate to meet the specification and local environmental conditions. But it is not just durability where our advice can prove valuable – we can also advise on where choosing a different type of fastener could make assembly in the factory and installation processes more efficient and safer.

Rapierstar’s technical expertise means we have become an integrated supply chain partner to the majority of the UK’s most forward-thinking window and door fabricators.

This has helped our company grow and become the leading technical authority in the UK and Ireland’s fenestration industry, supporting roughly 15.5 million window and door units each year.

Holding a 75% market share, Rapierstar’s role reflects a long-standing commitment to delivering the engineering depth needed for high-performance fixings.

And that means the windows and doors currently being installed across all domestic sectors, from new build and social housing to self-builders and private homeowners undertaking replacement projects are more likely than not to be manufactured using Rapierstar fixings.

This includes the windows and doors installed into homes built using modular or off-site construction, which is becoming an increasingly important method to deliver new social housing at scale. The Rapierstar portfolio includes fixings to enable frame installation into a variety of substrates, offering a consistently high quality MMC-compatible solution for assured long term performance.

Technical leadership
The role that Rapierstar plays largely goes on under the radar, but we make a significant contribution to maximising value in the supply chain, as well as providing tenants or homeowners with products they can depend on.

We are a technical partner at the intersection of factory performance, product reliability, and regulatory compliance, ensuring fasteners are seen as performance-critical process controls, not just commodities.

It is important to remember that screws are not individually approved, unrelated pieces of hardware – they constitute integral system components. Their performance is determined by the standards set for the entire assembly, such as BS 7412:2024 and – where enhanced security is required – PAS 24. A screw is what ensures a 10-year guarantee does not become a recurring problem over a decade.

If a fastener’s performance is optimised, a failure risk can be eliminated or at least significantly reduced, thus offering whole life cost savings to be achieved on a window or door. This is what we refer to as mitigating Avoidable Failure Costs (AFC).

We have calculated that while total fastener investment for a standard sash window is about 69 pence, a single failure can be extremely costly. For example, head shearing, when the fastener top breaks off due to misuse of high-torque drivers reaching excessively high speeds, a 1.2 pence part failure can turn into over £600 in remediation costs.

Through the supply partnerships we have with all the leading manufacturers and installers, we are able to identify issues like this and provide guidance and support to minimise them. It is all part of our support to work with fabricators to address manufacturing pressure points like thread stripping and profile deformation.

Ultimately, Rapierstar’s solid engineering backs our customers’ manufacturing claims, protecting their reputations and bottom lines. And that offers reassurance to specifiers and private customers who can be confident their windows and doors are optimised for quality and performance when they are manufactured using Rapierstar branded fasteners.