Too many cooks?

Thermoseal Group’s sales director, Mark Hickox, asks if too much advice can lower the quality of your unit.

The IGU manufacturing industry is something of a hive mind: the requirements from clients and building regulations change frequently, which are met with regular technical developments from all parts of the supply chain.

As a result, together, we can be ambitious with our designs, while meeting the ever-stringent requirements for health and safety, energy efficiency and security, etc.

On the whole, it works well. Occasionally, we see situations that can’t be satisfactorily resolved. For example, in heritage projects customers often demand slim units with very low sightlines, which come as close as possible to mimicking single glazed windows. (This is often unhelpfully encouraged by out-of-touch planning departments.)

The result is that non-compliant IGUs are provided by some IGU manufacturers (along with a list of caveats) that inevitably fail long before they should.

But this only happens rarely, and IGU manufacturers usually get full technical support from their suppliers and trade associations, ensuring that requirements are met, regulations are adhered to, and quality is maintained.

But I would argue that this too could be problematic.

If, as an IGU manufacturer, you are engaging with numerous suppliers, all focused on protecting the specification of their products, then it is inevitable that some of that advice is going to be conflicting.

There’s nothing quite so disheartening as a group of technical salesmen from different component suppliers trying to establish the cause of a fault on a sealed unit.

We have been aware of this since we started supplying the IGU industry with hot melt machines in 1979, and we have always been advocates for independent testing and accreditation.

In 2010 we established our technical centre and EN1279 test laboratory, which today is operated by qualified chemists using the latest technology and equipment.

This gives us many benefits, including testing our products on a batch-by-batch basis, and providing full traceability. We can test our competitors’ products and compare their results with our own, and we can test all our IGU components – including desiccant, sealant and spacer – in one unit to make sure they are fully compatible.

But most importantly, it fully supports the advice and technical information we supply when we visit our customers – everything is fully backed up by test evidence.

But what if you could get rid of all those competing voices?

In July, Thermoseal Group was acquired by Fenzi, which – in one fell swoop – filled in the small gaps in our product offering. As a result, we now offer the most comprehensive range of IGU components in the industry.

Take spacer bars for example. We now offer flexible, thermoplastic, plastic tube, hybrid tubes, and ferrous metal spacer.

On the one hand, we can meet your requirements for all your needs, but we can offer advice that isn’t influenced by a narrow product offering – we offer it all, so our only interest is ensuring our customers get exactly what they need.

The idea of a one-stop-shop is well established, but most people talk about the single point of order as the key benefit. I would argue that that should extend to technical support as well.

Choose your key suppliers carefully, with a view to keeping the competing channels of advice to a minimum, keeping the route to the perfect IGU clear of distraction.