Isabel Kavanagh, general manager at Jack Aluminium Systems, reflects on a decade in the aluminium industry and why growing a systems house without losing its personal approach is one of the biggest challenges facing the business.

When I joined Jack Aluminium straight from school around ten years ago, I never imagined I would eventually become general mManager. Over that time, I’ve worked across sales and purchasing and had the opportunity to see the business from almost every angle.

One thing that experience has taught me is that an aluminium order is rarely as straightforward as it looks. Behind every delivery is a chain of people, decisions and conversations. Sales, purchasing, suppliers, the warehouse, transport, finishing, paperwork, pricing and lead times all have to come together.

Then, just when you think everything is under control, someone sends an email at 4:55pm asking: “Any chance we can get this out tomorrow?” It’s part of the industry.

Naturally, customers expect us to move quickly. They want answers, solutions and certainty wherever we can provide it. And we can’t always say yes, sometimes the answer genuinely must be no. But our approach at Jack Aluminium is simple: if we can find a way to do it, let’s find a way to do it.

As a business grows, that joined-up approach becomes increasingly important. The warehouse needs to know what the customer has been promised, purchasing needs to understand what is coming through, and sales needs visibility of what can realistically be delivered.

It sounds straightforward, but maintaining that communication becomes more challenging as a business gets bigger. At Jack Aluminium, we’ve worked hard to grow without losing the personal approach that has always been important to us. We know our customers, we understand that different customers have different expectations, and over time we learn how they like to work.

Good customer service isn’t necessarily about making everything perfect. It’s about communicating when something isn’t going to plan and taking ownership of what happens next. If a customer has a problem, the answer shouldn’t be: “That’s another department’s responsibility.” It should be: “Right, what do we need to do to sort it?” That mindset makes a difference.

The changing role of aluminium

The role of aluminium in the market continues to evolve. Its use is expanding across commercial, residential and increasingly specialist applications, and with that comes a different set of expectations for systems houses.

Fabricators aren’t simply looking for another profile. They’re looking for systems that can help them enter new markets, meet increasingly demanding performance requirements and manufacture efficiently.

That’s something we’ve seen clearly at Jack Aluminium. Our product development over recent years has moved beyond simply adding to the range. It’s been about identifying where the market is going and developing systems that allow our customers to go there with us.

TD68, for example, has achieved STS202 BR2 security performance, allowing aluminium to compete in applications where higher security requirements have traditionally favoured other materials. ID30, meanwhile, was developed around flexibility, giving fabricators a single internal glazing system capable of supporting multiple configurations.

Both are examples of the same principle: development should have a purpose. It should make something possible, solve a problem or give a fabricator another opportunity.

Jack Aluminium has grown significantly since I joined, with more customers, more orders, more products and more going on across the business. The challenge now is making sure growth doesn’t mean losing the qualities that made customers choose us in the first place.

We’re still an independent systems house. We still want customers to be able to pick up the phone and speak to someone who understands their business. We still want to find solutions rather than simply pass problems from one department to another.

There will always be price increases, supplier challenges, lead times, urgent orders and last-minute requests. That’s simply part of working in this industry.

We might have a conversation about it; we might have a laugh about it and occasionally we might wonder how we’re going to make it happen. But if we can find a way to do it, we will. Because ultimately, aluminium is aluminium. What makes the difference is the people behind it.