Rapid foils growth

Emplas has said that more flexible delivery and increased affordability have driven major growth in sales of foiled product.

According to the fabricator, the expansion of its ex-stock colour range and corresponding cuts in lead times and costs, has led to growth in foils sales, which now account for more than 25% of all orders.

This follows a restructure of its offer at the beginning of this year, which made foiled cream, anthracite grey, anthracite grey on white, black brown, and black brown on white available as ex-stock standard colours.

John Leary, sales and marketing director at Emplas, said: “The impact foiled product is having on a second-time replacement market is very difficult to overstate. Having restructured our offer at the beginning of the year to increase affordability but also speed of delivery, we have recorded really good growth in sales.

“We can now offer eight ex-stock colours available in lead times of 10 days or less, plus an extensive range of special foils.”

‘The Window, Door and Conservatory Markets in Housing in Great Britain’, published by Palmer argued while the market grew by 1% last year in volume, in installed value it grew by 7%.

“While volume growth was only modest 2016 saw some interesting trends towards higher value products,” the report’s authors said.

PVCU sales were up by 8% last year, driven in part by a leap in sales of foiled products. This, the Palmer report suggested, was most clearly illustrated in the window market, where a 1.2% increase in the market overall to 6.82 million frames, was outstripped by the increase in installed value of 5.5% to £2.38 billion. This was driven by demand for foils including both woodgrains and solid colours – up 45% since 2013.