My last visit to James Jones & Sons’ Timber Systems Division at Forres came 11 years ago.
The site – the manufacturing hub for the company’s I-joist product – the JJI-Joist – was busy with builders this time as a new £2.5m finger-jointing facility was being constructed.
The new building being erected (now complete) was a tangible sign of the pick-up in the UK housebuilding industry, as James Jones looks to increase its JJI-Joist capacity and flexibility to meet growing demand. James Jones, which established the Forres operation in 1999, estimates that its JJI-Joist has about a 40% market share in the UK I-joist market.
Annual JJI-Joist production capacity has increased to 9 million linear metres – equivalent to supplying _ oors for 90,000 UK houses.
"Prior to 2007/08 we had expansion plans to put in a new finger-jointing line, but the credit crunch dampened our expectations," said Jon Stevenson, marketing manager at James Jones.
The government’s Help to Buy scheme and an upturn in housebuilding in the summer of 2013 was a key moment that kick-started demand for construction products. The speed of the turnaround was a welcome surprise to everyone in the industry, including James Jones.
"By the end of July that year we had taken on an extra 14% in staff," added Mr Stevenson.
The company’s acquisition of a remaining parcel of land – the old SEIL building – adjacent to its site closed the loop on the hitherto C-shaped site and made it possible to erect a purpose-built building to house the new finger-jointing line and make better utilisation of the whole site.
At the heart of the new finger-jointing line, which produces softwood fiange sections for the JJI-Joists, is production equipment supplied by Canada-based Conception RP. Other new technology and infrastructure investments on the five-acre site increased the total 2014/15 spend to more than £4m, including dust extraction equipment supplied by Indusvent, a GreCon spark detection system, a German made chipper / hogger system from PRW Machinery and biomass heating system provided by Ranheat. Yard improvements and new undercover storage complete the investment. The new finger-jointing line was specified to be very flexible. "It is going to give us so much more potential for the future," Mr Stevenson added.
"We have also produced this line with a view to doing some new type of products as well."
For the time being the old finger-jointing line will remain running, though the intention is to eventually decommission it. As far as JJI-Joist production capacity goes, the new line will almost double the plant capacity of JJI-Joist equivalent linear output. And the company says there is already spare capacity available from an earlier £1m investment in a new web room in 2008.
"The demand in the housing market started well in 2015. We talk to a lot of customers and they are extremely confident about the future.
"Large volume customers want to have continuity and security of supply." The increased optimism has led to the JJI-Joist operation recording its highest-ever sales levels this year.
James Jones is also seeing demand for I-joists in walls and roofs, including for Passivhaus structures, and an increase in prefabricated I-joist cassettes. Roof cassettes, in particular, are an area taking off with housebuillders and for larger structures such as schools, due to their construction speed, strength, lightness and ability to accommodate high levels of insulation. "We see more and more people producing these kits, from one-offs to small developments," it said.
James Jones’ partners for metal work are Cullen Building products (part of ITW) and Simpson Strong-Tie, while it operates its own design software – FloorMaster for distributors/fabricators, which has been revised to ensure compliance with Eurocodes. The software is also able to output the final, fully engineered layout to a 3D, data rich IFC file format for a full building model for projects, using the Building Information Modelling approach.
