Big things predicted for 2021

Victorian Sliders has taken on 24 more manufacturing staff to cope with continuing high demand for its EcoSlide sash window, which follows the most successful 12 months in its history, the company said.

The new employees will help the manufacturer build on the momentum of 2020, and ramp up production as it invests a further £4.2 million on top of the more than £12 million it’s spent over the last five years.

Coming out of the first national lockdown in the summer of 2020, the firm was greeted with enormous demand, as homeowners around the country diverted money that they probably would’ve spent on foreign holidays into home improvements.

As the year progressed, that demand remained extremely strong, so much so that Victorian Sliders broke its record for the number of frames produced in a week on several occasions.

By the end of the year, the company had registered sales 24.5% higher than 2019, even with the impact of multiple lockdowns, and is predicting another bumper 12 months ahead.

“Despite the huge challenges we and all businesses faced, we saw incredible demand in 2020, and as our 24 new manufacturing staff demonstrate, we’re expecting demand to be similarly strong in 2021,” group managing director Andy Jones said.

“The Bank of England has just predicted that the UK economy will bounce back strongly in the spring as we start to see the effects of the mass vaccination rollout, and with a question mark still hanging over international travel and foreign holidays, this could bring another very positive summer for fenestration.

“Thanks to the strategy of far-sighted investment and continuous improvement, Victorian Sliders is excellently positioned to thrive as the market consolidates and more and more fabricators choose to outsource their vertical sliding windows from dedicated VS manufacturers who do not compete with them on other core products.”