Stronger together
Fabricators don’t just want choice, they also want certainty, argues Ian Cocken, director of sales and marketing at Aluplast.
Three years ago, the UK was on the eve of the biggest pandemic in living memory. This had far-reaching consequences throughout British society, including the home improvement sector as homeowners looked at their properties in a new light after spending months in lockdown.
“For the window and door industry, those trends that were slowly taking hold in the years leading up to the turn of the decade suddenly hit the mainstream,” explains Aluplast’s director of sales and marketing, Ian Cocken. “This impacted our sector in a number of ways, but the most significant one was supply.”
Cocken argues that if lessons are to be learned from this period in history, then maintaining a closer relationship with your suppliers must be key.
“We picked up quite a bit of new business in the last three years, especially from fabricators who felt as though they had been side-lined by their previous supplier,” Cocken says. “People are generally reasonable, and they understood that the world was a different place following Covid. We all had issues with supply – no-one was immune.
“Where Aluplast had an advantage was overall capacity, and a strong focus on those products that were suddenly in demand – namely flush and colour.”
Cocken explains that the ability to supply foiled profile within a reasonable timeframe was attractive to many new customers because demand for colour increased significantly while supply appeared to dwindle.
“Aluplast has always focused on capacity, and long before Covid hit, we were investing in a new site in Poland which will help guarantee supply for our customers,” Cocken says.
Aluplast is in the process of moving into a new £26 million state-of-the-art extrusion facility on a 15-hectare site, which will include a production hall, a raw material mixing plant alongside technical and R&D facilities.
This can house up to 50 high-tech, high-speed twin extrusion lines – each able to extrude 6m of profile every minute – alongside foiling lines, which will double the profile giant’s already extensive manufacturing capacity.
“We are also doubling in size our facility in Tewkesbury, and together these investments will secure the supply of high value products into the UK, such as our flush casement window, and our flush door, which is available as a French door, or as a single outward-opening door,” Cocken says.
Like Aluplast’s flush casement, the new flush door suites perfectly with the systems company’s Ideal 70 and Ideal 4000 profiles. This opens-up opportunities in both the heritage and contemporary sectors by providing a uniform flush appearance across both windows and doors, while minimising stockholding for fabricators.
The vast majority of Aluplast’s flush casement orders include colour, and with a range of 40 different finishes, including the next generation Woodec and Aludec foils, Aluplast has invested significantly in its foil offer. This has allowed it to maintain a strong supply of its most popular stock colours, with foiled product accounting for as much as 50% of total order volume.
Aluplast’s flush door has a five-chamber design that can achieve U-values as low as 1.2W/m2K, and is manufactured using Ecotech, which maximises the amount of recycled content in a profile’s design, without affecting performance.
Significantly, the flush door is also available to fabricators who want to offer the full flush appearance, but can’t access the doors from their current supplier.
“We understand that some suppliers in the UK are not offering their full product range to all their customers,” Cocken says. “The flush casement is a modern success story, and its value is appreciated more if a flush appearance can be achieved across the whole elevation – including the doors. We understand this, and we are seeing demand increase rapidly.”
Cocken says that understanding the needs of your customers is vital in a changing market, and working closely with them to meet that demand is key to a successful relationship.
“If the pandemic taught us anything, it was that success relies much more than a delivery date and an invoice,” Cocken concludes. “Aluplast is a family-run business, with a modern product range, and a very secure supply – all of which helps provide security to our customers in a challenging market.”