Summary

  • Order books are busy but timber costs are a concern.
  • Manufacturers of timber fire doors and windows have passed the higher costs onto merchants.
  • Demand is strong for timber windows.
  • The building trend towards apartments is helping the stair market.
  • The Wood Window Alliance will be officially launched on September 20.
  • Architectural joinery firms are generally busy.

The majority of UK joinery companies appear reasonably busy at present and boast satisfactory order files for the remainder of the year. However, underlying “patches of uncertainty” have been created by, among other factors, higher raw material costs and the prospect of further increases in interest rates.

Rising costs of timber have been of particular concern, with redwood, whitewood and panel products such as MDF and chipboard all gaining significant ground this year. Other raw materials have mirrored this upward price trend: for example, the cost of lead weights used in sash windows has risen by more than 50% in the past 18 months. “Small cost increases seem to have gone out of fashion,” complained one manufacturer. “Five per cent seems to be the entry level these days.”

Often pricing jobs many months in advance, joiners are particularly vulnerable to cost increases. At the same time, rising timber prices fuel concerns about substitution. One contact said: “The worry is that, if prices continue to rise, end users will start looking at alternative materials.”

Trade surveys continue to reveal that manufacturers of timber fire doors and windows are sufficiently confident in the strength of these markets to pass on their higher costs to the merchant sector. At least one of the major mass producers has introduced price increases in its latest catalogue while most others appear to have held their prices relatively firm in recent months.

Strong demand for windows

Evidence suggests that demand for timber windows in particular is “strong and strengthening”, to the extent that several leading manufacturers said their output was currently constrained by in-house production capacity rather than by sales opportunities. An industry contact told TTJ: “I don’t know of a single timber window manufacturer who isn’t optimistic. They are saying that business is as brisk as it’s ever been at the domestic and the contractual commercial level.”

The fire doors market is falling short of the giddy heights attained by windows, with manufacturers said to be frustrated at the commodity tag attached to a product that they regard as added value. So while sales have been encouraging, scope for higher prices has been limited. In terms of product trends, a couple of leading producers pointed to a move away from sliding patio doors in favour of folding units as an aid to turning an outside area into more of a living space.

Traditionally, the impact of higher interest rates is felt most keenly and quickly in the stairs sector, with refurbishment work tending to suffer an immediate adverse impact. However, the dip following recent rate hikes has been less pronounced than many companies had feared – possibly because the rate increases have been gradual and were not unexpected.

Of course, the surge in construction of apartment blocks has also had a marked effect on the stairs market. Among those companies mounting a response to this trend, Jeld-Wen reports plenty of interest in its “Common Stair” – a timber product launched earlier this year and aimed specifically at the communal stair market. A spokesperson noted particular interest from timber frame companies for a product which is “competitively priced and offers considerably quicker delivery times compared to concrete”.

The strength of the timber windows market owes much to the products’ environmental credentials. Public sector buyers in particular are specifying timber ahead of PVCu windows “because they tick the green box in terms of whole life cycle costs”, a leading manufacturer commented.

Technical advances

Technical advances have also underpinned the success of timber windows. In late June, for example, Mightons’ Ecotilt sash window passed BS 7950 – “Specification for enhanced security performance of windows for domestic applications”. The standard enables the installer – after auditing – to achieve Secured by Design accreditation. Vincent Kerrigan, deputy technical manager at Chiltern Dynamics and Chiltern International Fire, said that Mighton had “in one stroke shattered the defeatist view in the industry that timber windows are not capable of meeting today’s standards”.

Despite the increased uptake of timber windows, industry experts are warning against complacency given that competing industries are not standing still on ‘green’ or technical issues. In this context, the countdown has begun to the official unveiling of the Wood Window Alliance. This will be a “very high-profile” marketing campaign “underpinned by sound technical information” which will aim to promote the benefits of wood windows not only to those responsible for specifying or buying products but also to the general public, said Richard Lambert, chief executive of the British Woodworking Federation (BWF). Full details of the scheme will be revealed at the launch in London on September 20, he added.

Co-ordinated by the BWF, the alliance has already attracted around 40 members, including more than 20 timber window manufacturers as well as suppliers and installers. This founding membership comprises not only UK producers but also leading manufacturers supplying into this market from, for example, Scandinavia. More companies will be encouraged to join, said Mr Lambert.

Healthy initial support is also reported for the Total Support Service launched by the BWF in April this year, with particular interest being shown in the group chain of custody certification scheme. Five companies have already completed the scheme, two of them within a period of just three weeks, thereby disproving the common misconception that the certification process is slow and time-consuming, according to The Federation.

Increasingly, contracts are awarded on the basis of companies’ ability to prove chain of custody, “and this trend will only intensify”, the BWF added.

Sources in the architectural joinery sector confirmed that an increasing number of tenders call for chain of custody assurances. A spokesperson for one company currently pursuing certification commented: “A lot of clients are saying they will restrict their suppliers to those with appropriate accreditation. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to pay us more for what we do – it’s just that we won’t get the business if we haven’t got accreditation.”

In terms of current market conditions, most architectural joinery firms appear to be busy, with the volume of office interior and shopfitting projects said to be generally larger than this time last year. At the same time, most firms appear satisfied with their forward order books for the remainder of 2007. Quotations have been increased to take account of higher labour, fuel and raw material costs “but that doesn’t mean to say that our margins are any greater”, TTJ was told.

According to a straw poll of customers’ timber preferences, the popularity of black walnut appears undiminished. With the limited availability of this species out of America, there has been an increase in supply from south-east Europe. At the higher volume end of the market, oak and maple are continuing to prove popular.

The cost of wage rises

Several architectural joinery firms said this week that almost double-digit percentage pay increases for their workforce were “beginning to really hurt”, especially in the light of the wider trend towards working fewer hours or at what are increasingly perceived to be anti-social times, such as weekends.

In addition, many companies are continuing to encounter problems in finding and retaining suitably skilled workers, with site foremen and bench joiners emerging as the scarcest commodities. A large proportion of these firms have turned to apprenticeship schemes in a bid to grow their own talent, but many senior managers are worried that newly-qualified workers will quickly succumb to the offer of a fatter pay cheque somewhere else.

However, a recent survey by the Woodworking Industry Training Forum would suggest that such concerns are based largely on myth and misconception. Findings revealed that significantly fewer than 10% of fully-trained apprentices leave their initial employer within a year. Indeed, evidence suggests that more than half of these apprentices will still be with their original firms after three years. The research findings are scheduled to be published in full later this year.