TTJ: How has the market for cladding and shingles been over the last 12 months?
Andrew Allen: The cladding market has been steady but cedar shingle sales have reduced. This normally happens when the cost of shingles hits a certain price level and they are replaced by competing materials.
TTJ: What is the ratio between your cladding sales and shingles sales?
AA: Shingle sales are a very small amount of the overall total – less than 1%.
TTJ: How large is the shakes market and why do customers opt for shakes rather than shingles?
AA: The ‘heavy’ look of cedar shakes gives them a distinctive appearance and some customers like this rustic and robust look – but the shakes market in the UK is very small.
TTJ: Canadian western red cedar has always been a ‘go-to’ species for cladding – is this still the case?
AA: Western red cedar remains a popular cladding species due its renowned qualities. It remains a product of first choice, even though costs have increased in the last two years. Siberian larch (from Russia, although a lot is bought through European stockists and not direct) and Thermowood have been used increasingly over the last few years. This is mainly due to their lower cost, whilst offering a cladding that will adequately perform its primary function as a decorative rainscreen.
TTJ: Are you importing fully finished cladding products or do you machine/add value?
AA: We do both. We import a range of factory finished cladding products and we also produce added value claddings in the UK. This enables us to provide an unrivalled range of products for the market and not restrict designers, architects or end users’ choices.
TTJ: Are there any noticeable trends in terms of coatings?
AA: Coatings have become more popular, slowly moving away from the nonmaintenance ‘grey look’ of weathered natural timber. Customers are also tending to look at a range of different coating types, offering different looks, rather than the traditional high film build coatings. They tend to prefer a ‘flatter’ look than the ‘shiny’ look and these can be easier to maintain.
TTJ: You offer fire retardant and preservative treatments – what does this entail?
AA: We offer a pressure impregnated leach-resistant fire-retardant treatment to meet Euroclass B and C. Due to the different species, profiles and lengths requested, we only treat to order and do not currently import any materials with fire retardant qualities.
TTJ: Has the Grenfell tower fire affected business?
AA: Whilst we didn’t lose any sales through cancellations directly after Grenfell, in the following weeks we did receive many phone calls from customers we had supplied fire retardant cladding to, requesting written confirmation regarding the cladding we had supplied.
We have not seen any increase in requests for fire retardant cladding. The current situation is that it is still being specified but some projects are being changed from timber to other non-combustible materials due to risk aversion.
We had one example where we delivered fire retardant timber to a site for the local building control officer to then advise that he did not want timber on the building and the client had to use a cementitious product instead.
TTJ: What is your view on the government’s ban on combustible materials in external wall systems over 18m?
AA: As an industry we should all be very concerned about how this issue is currently progressing. Whilst no one wants to see another tragedy like Grenfell and, quite rightly, we have had a strong emotional reaction, I hope that a rational debate can be had, where the qualities of timber as an environmentally valued building material can be used in buildings designed with appropriate detailing and overall building protection against fire.
TTJ: What impact has Brexit had on business so far?
AA: The main issue of Brexit for our company was the instant effect on currency, which we have now learned to live with. But, at the time of writing, any further adverse currency changes will be another blow to the competitiveness of our industry’s products.
We have had no issues on sourcing materials due to Brexit and we are carrying what we believe is the appropriate amount of stock as we approach March 29.
The current uncertainty is not helping anyone and our European suppliers are also in the dark, with no real information coming from them on what their individual government plans are.
