It’s around 200 miles from TTJ’s offices in mid-Kent to Grange Fencing Ltd‘s headquarters. A one-way journey takes about four hours. Nothing terribly remarkable in that, but consider for a moment the fact that just prior to Easter, the peak of the garden products season, Grange will have 300 miles of fencing in stock. That’s all the way from Sevenoaks to Telford and half way back.

And that’s just the fencing. It’ll also have 80-odd miles of trellis and a similar mileage of log roll. The figures are mindboggling and are a measure – quite literally – of the intensity of production that must precede the traditional Easter orgy of gardening activity.

While Grange Fencing may be enjoying the gardening revolution of the 20th and 21st centuries, its roots lie firmly in the industrial revolution of the 19th. Many of the goods produced around Birmingham at the time were transported in barrels and, in 1868, the Hill family – which still owns the company – started a coopers business. The family later developed the packaging side of the operation but also started a ladder making business, the offcuts from which found their way into fencing.

Around 15 years ago the fencing and packaging divisions split and the former became Grange Fencing’s core business. Before this time, of course, the fencing had become so successful that the ladder offcuts were becoming insufficient to supply the demand and the company began to source its raw material elsewhere.

‘Many years ago we decided we would set our specification for the timber required and seek those timbers around the world,’ says sales director Nick Carter. Grange sources material, the vast majority of which is softwood, from the UK, Ireland, eastern Europe and elsewhere throughout the world.

The advantage of shopping around the globe, says Mr Carter, is that if there is a sudden price movement in one area, Grange has ‘a basket of supplies’ and can avoid passing dramatic price swings onto the customer.

Challenging market

Those customers include B&Q, Jewson, Build Base, the Prospero Buying Organisation, the CBA merchants buying association and garden centres such as Country Gardens. It’s a challenging market, not just because of the volumes demanded – Grange will produce more than a million units in its factory this year – but also because it is consolidating. ‘More and more business is being concentrated in fewer and fewer outlets, which is a challenge and a very interesting one,’ says Mr Carter. ‘It’s happening in all walks of life and we’ve just got to accept that and realign our strategies accordingly,’ he adds phlegmatically.

‘Realigning’ is also essential for keeping one step ahead of competitors. Product ranges throughout the industry are inherently similar and it’s hard work coming up with an idea that will set a manufacturer apart – particularly when that idea is likely to be copied. Grange Fencing keeps on its toes, however.

‘We have a wider range of fence panel styles than our competitors,’ says Mr Carter. ‘For example, our “eyecatcher” panel, which we introduced six years ago, was one of the first high value panels in the UK. Prior to that, high value panels were only available in countries like Germany where the market was prepared to pay £50-100 for a fencing panel!’

Grange has been developing its fencing and core ranges over the past 10 years in order to build a solid foundation for the business which has seen turnover more than double to about £25m in the past three years. ‘We started to develop our own style because, in the fencing industry, why should someone move from one supplier to another for a fence panel, even if it’s 20p cheaper? That’s a costly exercise.

‘What we decided to do was to bring innovation and higher value products to the market. The advantage to our customers is that they can improve their profit margins because they’re selling higher margin product,’ continues Mr Carter.

Hence the company’s introduction of willow at GLEE 98 for the 1999 season and the launch of its bamboo range at GLEE 99 for the 2000 season. In both cases, says Mr Carter, Grange was the first major manufacturer to sell the product.

Designs have come primarily from the board sitting down and bouncing ideas around, but recently the company has employed the services of garden designer Jac Flower, who presented the Instant Garden TV programme. The ‘Jac Flower Collection’, featured in Grange’s colour brochure, comprises a variety of garden designs using products from the company’s range.

Market research

‘We try to do a limited amount of market research to gain reaction to the product,’ says Mr Carter, ‘but once it is introduced to the range, we use GLEE as its springboard.’

Grange operates from three neighbouring sites in Telford: one is a volume production unit turning out all the key fence panels and trellis; another is responsible for garden products; and the third is devoted to offices and warehousing. In addition, the company has a large warehouse close by where the willow and bamboo products are stored, a factory and large storage area in Much Wenlock, a storage site in Whitchurch (both nearby) and a further two storage areas in Scotland. It also manufactures Post Anchor products in its factory in Birmingham.

Grange stopped all primary sawmilling many years ago. ‘Traditionally we would buy timber in the round from a local forest, debark it and cut it accordingly,’ says Mr Carter. ‘There are two disadvantages with this. One is that you’re wholly reliant on the price and availability of your local source and the other is that, if you try to obtain it from a source further away, it is very uneconomical to transport timber in the round.’

For some time, Grange has been buying component parts and assembling them back at base. The vast majority of its product range is manufactured in this way, while items such as log roll are brought in in finished form. ‘The whole market imports log roll or sub-contracts it now because it just can’t be produced economically in this country,’ says Mr Carter.

Sourcing raw material

‘One of our main skills is sourcing product to our specification around the world,’ he adds. ‘We had an involvement in introducing the fencing components industry to Portugal and we’ve done exactly the same in Latvia. We moved into Latvia seven years ago and, through joint ventures, supplied machinery, trained people to achieve the necessary accuracies and developed a number of sources in those areas.’

Forest certification is becoming a significant factor in Latvia and Grange Fencing, as a member of the WWF 95 Plus Group, has had a major influence. Last year, managing director Duncan Hill brokered a meeting between Scottish Woodlands and directors of the Latvian state forests at which the latter made an undertaking to pursue Forest Stewardship Council certification. In order to help Latvia’s private forest owners achieve the same goal, Grange set up a company – Forest 2000 – which provides a Group Resource Management service and an ‘umbrella’ for the private sector to move towards FSC. With this twin-track approach, Grange hopes to have the vast majority of its Latvian imports certified very shortly.

It’s been a sizeable investment for Grange both in terms of money and time: ‘We believe very strongly in the FSC and the benefits it brings to the environment, the forests and the indigenous people,’ confirms Mr Carter.

There’s been a fair amount of investment going on back at the ranch too. Grange has just stumped up a cool £250,000 on a new computer system which will revolutionise communications between it and its customers. The system has already gone live and, by the end of this year, customers will be able to log onto Grange’s website and, through use of a security password, access their account, purchase history, and stock availability. They will also be able to place orders seven days a week.

The sales force is also being equipped with laptops which will be updated each morning, enabling the same information to be available to customers who do not have internet access or who do not wish to use it.

Other recent developments include the purchase of Post Anchor in April 2000. ‘It’s been a difficult market for others to break into,’ says Mr Carter, ‘but we bring credibility to the offer.’

The range of posts, clips, bases and anchors sits very comfortably within Grange’s existing product range and is equally seasonal. Which brings us to the weather, which has been a double-edged sword for those in the fencing and garden products industry. The high winds at the end of last year created the demand, but the accompanying rain and floods prevented much of the work being carried out.

‘Only distress purchases were made at the time,’ says Mr Carter, ‘and I think much of the business generated by those storms is lying dormant and will feed into the system over the next few months.’

It is his firm belief that it’s even more imperative than usual that customers build up sufficient stocks in time for Easter. That pent-up demand means that when the business breaks ‘it’s going to go crazy’.

‘If they stock up now,’ says Mr Carter, ‘it’s a win-win situation. They can’t lose.’