Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Tilecast news, features and analysis brought to you by Dari Vitaladict.
Hello and welcome back to Tilecast. After a short break, the kids are back after the summer recess, back to fighting over who's going to be the leader of the gang and argue over whose fault it is that everything was left in the mess last term.
So.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's enough about the government.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: The UK government, I hastened to add.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: But anyway, yeah, we're back, we're back.
The schools have gone back, too.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Yeah, they have, yeah. Those kids are fine, though. We like them. So what's been happening, Joe? We've been off for about three weeks.
Last thing, you know, the end of the last episode, I think CTD had sadly departed or been taken over.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Well, yes, I mean, it's not like there's been a massive amount of news stories from around the world. As often happens in August news stops, and there hasn't been much coming out of Asia or America or anywhere else. And so this is largely going to be UK based catch up. And there's no doubt that the big news story of the week was the publication of the Grenfell Tower report nearly seven years after the tragic fire in the London town. Seven years that caused. Yeah, 72 deaths. Seven years. Yes, I know, it's hard to believe.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: So anything came out of that report that you thought was particularly.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Well, it was a very, very hard hitting, comprehensive and salutary report. It found that the fire was a result of a chain of failures by government dishonest companies and a lack of strategy by the fire service. It really was catalogue of errors.
It found that successive governments had ignored, delayed or disregarding concerns about the safety of the industry and found systematic dishonesty by the manufacturers that led to the Taobot being clad in very combustible materials. One manufacturer was even found to have deliberately concealed the risks that its cladding posed. So, yeah, it was pretty clear and damning.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: And that deception, that company deception, I think, makes me think of this whole silicosis thing that is starting to rumble through the tile industry.
It's a kind of warning, don't muck about with people's health and safety.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: No, it's absolutely right. I mean, there's no doubt that the Grenfell Tower report is only going to be of any use if people actually take on board the lessons that came out of it. And the same is true with silicosis. Of course, we kind of know what the problem is. People are already dying from it. But we know that with the right equipment and the right training and the right procedures, it need not pose a risk.
And I think the key to all of this, and it's happened in the construction over and over again, and it certainly happened with Grenfell. The warnings were out there, but nobody was paying attention, nobody was putting policies in place to remediate the situation.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: And it reminds me, you've mentioned that there was an american company recently that went into liquidation that actually had a bit of a scandal about its formaldehyde and its flooring. So that was another one. And, of course, the consequence of that was the company is no longer in existence. So it's a lesson, you know, even for those worried about the bottom line, it might just mean you no longer have a business. There are lots of reasons for thinking about the big picture.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, looking at the fire in particular, I mean, there were some staggering parallels. I mean, right, going back to 2008 with the Monte Carlo casino fire in Las Vegas.
There was the Olympus tower in Grozny in Russia in 2013, and there was torch tower in Dubai, which classically actually caught fire twice.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: And they were all using exactly the same material.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Pretty much the same material.
The difference being was that in none of those fires anybody died. They were able to evacuate the buildings or they took place when there weren't many people in there. And so I think, sadly, they just looked at it. Oh, it's a big fire. We'll replace the cladding. No issue. I mean, as I say, that the torch tower in Dubai, they actually replaced the cladding after the first fire and then it burnt again two years later.
But the one that I probably will strike home to the tiling community was the El Campanar fire in this February in Valencia in Spain. Not exactly the same material, but very similar. And you look at how quickly that spread, it's still frightening. And there have been at least three other big fires using similar cladding series on multi story domestic buildings between Grenfell and El Campanar. So, yeah, yeah, no, well, we've all.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Been warned, so, I mean, and it isn't just about those building materials. There are all sorts of materials being used that if there are any doubts about their safety or the way they can be used, manufactured, you know, we should all be aware of these things. And there's no shame in being the whistleblower that says, hang on a minute, can't be right.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: I think, yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see how the companies which were named and chained in this recover, if they can actually. If they can recover from it, as you were saying? The american flooring company, ll flooring used to be one of the very biggest names in retail. Flooring in the states had over 400 outlets. Our listeners might probably know them better by the name of lumber liquidators. And they never really recovered after a tv documentary called 60 Minutes revealed the dangerous levels of formaldehyde in its laminate flooring. I don't know if that was the only thing that brought it down, but, you know, that kind of reputational damage is very hard to bounce back from. So the cutting manufacturers named and chained in the Grenfell tower report have got a huge struggle ahead.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's important, I think, that the industry does do its best to police itself because previous government attempts to try and correct things that have, you know, got out of control a bit haven't been great, have they?
[00:06:28] Speaker B: No, they haven't.
I mean, and often there is, as they say, what the thing that's often called perverse incentives or unintended consequences. And government policy is one of the best ones of those. And what we're talking about is when you have a. You're trying to achieve one result and you achieve something very different.
It's often called the cobra effect, which is based on the anecdotal occurrence in India during the Raj when the british government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was really successful. A large number of snakes were killed for the reward.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Why wouldn't you?
[00:07:08] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. However, people began to breed cobras for the income.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Ah, people are clever.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And so when the government became aware of this, they scrapped the reward program, at which point, guess what happened? The cobra breeders released all the cobras they've been doing, and you ended up with an increase in the wild cobra population.
And, you know, there are other great examples. In 2002, the british officials in Afghanistan offered afghan poppy farmers, believe, $700 an acre in return for destroying their poppy crop. But they put a time on it. So this ignited a poppy growing frenzy amongst the farmers, who sought to plant as many poppies as they possibly could to boost their cash for poppies payout. The savvy ones even harvested the SAP before destroying the plants, thus getting paid twice over. So talk about a perverse incentive or unintended consequence.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: No, good stories. Good stories. And, you know, we never learn, do we? You know, people are quite devious, really. But anyway, so what else? What's this got to do with the tiling and construction sector?
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, well, I know it's a bit of a long winded way to getting to it. But my. My intro is the headline. New house completion figures. There were just over 22,000 housing starts in England in first quarter of 2024, which is 41% down in the same quarter of 2023.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: So why, how can that be?
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Well, most likely it's due to the fact that house builders brought forward the starting of projects to avoid the cost of complying with the new building regulations introduced from the 15 June 2023, which specifically related to energy performance and electric vehicle charging points. So it's a classic case. You want to do one good thing and then you end up skewing something else completely. But my takeaway from it was, although they seem to have hit the ground running, the new Labour government is going to have a very hard time meeting its housing targets. The number of news bill starts in England fell 16% in 2023 to around 147,000. So if you're going to meet the ambitious targets that were set out during the election, it's going to be no easy matter.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And don't start bringing in new regulation. That just means everyone's going to sort of change their game plan.
We can't predict everything, can we?
[00:09:33] Speaker B: You can't. And, you know, unfortunately, there continues to be bad news in the materials sector. The Leicestershire based Aqualux Products, who are one of the better known brands in the bathroom sector, has gone into administration.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: They've been around about 40 years, haven't they?
[00:09:49] Speaker B: They have. There are specialists in premium glass showering screens and enclosures, and they've been scuppered by the double whammy of the impact of the cost of living crisis on the home improvement sector and the ongoing financial pressures caused by the material cost inflation.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: It's tough out there, believe me.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it is tough out there, but it's not all doom and gloom. Express Kitchens, the german kitchen brand owned by the Nolte Group, is launching into the UK market, starting with a London trade showroom. The brand claims to specialise in large projects and will be targeting architects, property developers and interior designers in the UK.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Right, so a bit more the commercial end than for high street.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: It is the commercial end, which I think is quite interesting, because there's been. There's been quite a lot of pain in the market for the people who are targeting standard kitchens in domestic dwellings. So this brand Express kitchens, going about it a slightly different way. They claim to offer value for money, so, you know, high quality at a realistic price. And the showroom space in London will feature, as well as the normal fitted kitchen displays selections of worktops, plus other things like sink and taps. Interesting to see how it fares, because it's, you know, it's approaching the same market, but in a slightly different way.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's not a known brand to the consumer. So if you're trying to sell your housing development, I guess just saying a german kitchen is quite a good thing, because we still associate german kitchens as being well designed and engineered.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: I think that'll be it. I mean, if they can get the look that house builders are after at a price that they can afford, they'll probably do very nicely. But this is a sector that, like most, if you get it right, you can do really well. If you get it wrong, you're out of business fairly quickly. But there is still investment going into it. The big distribution giant, PJH, who you may not have heard of, but you'll have certainly heard of all the brands that they distribute. I mean, they are huge. I mean, you're talking about 180 million pounds a year, something like that. They're opening up a new distribution site in Wolverhampton, which will be fired up for the end of this year. It's a big site aimed to increase stock availability and improve next day delivery. About twice the size of their existing operation in Canak, at around 200,000. PGH has also been quite old school. It's been adding 30 new vehicles to its 130 strong delivery fleet. Made a few appointments, so it's kind of quite a vote of confidence in the marketplace.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And back to the CTD story that we covered in the last podcast. I gather there's been a little bit more of development there.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. I mean, anybody who's been on LinkedIn of late and who has a lot of tile followers will have been seeing. There's been a lot of stories by people from CTD bewailing the loss of the company, losing their business. And thankfully for them, the former Tops boss, Matt Williams, has followed up Topsy's acquisition of 30 stores by picking up 16 of his own from the administrators. Williams's new company, Styled, will be adding these into the tile giant brand, 15 of them, while the Sutton Caulfield branch will trade as Tile Joyce, another company which he acquired recently. There will be 40 jobs across these shops. And styled are claiming that under the tile giant tile choice, styled and crowned tiles brands, they are now the largest independent tile retailer in the UK. I presume this means not publicly listed. And it's good news for the people who were left without a job when CTD went pop. As William said, we're delighted to reopen these stores and re employ the brilliant teams that worked in them. And judging from the reaction to the people to losing the job, there was a tremendous amount of pride in working for CTD, bewilderment at how the company had lost its way. And, you know, a lot of these people are tile people through and through, so. Yeah, good news story.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And Williams seems to be a guy who isn't just worried about profit. He clearly makes very well out of all of his business adventures, but he does think about the people and everything.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Well, you have to say he knows what he's doing. I mean, there are a few people in the UK who really know the tile industry and Matt's one of them. And, yeah, I mean, I think most people will wish him well because it's not easy retailing anything at the moment, but he's got some great locations and, you know, hopefully it'll pan out.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Absolutely. So the new government in the UK. Sorry, we're still in the UK to all these people who are elsewhere in the world, but the UK is fairly important to us. Any rate of Brexit has still got a bit of lingering nonsense going on.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Well, you know, yes, Brexit's had a beating kept across the construction sector and particularly across tiling, because apart from the shortages of skilled workers, and we did have quite a lot as it now, we've now discovered, of tilers who aren't citizens, and we're still facing the bureaucratic nightmare of customs clearances, etcetera. We're about to face the chaos surrounding the new cross border clearance procedures. And then I. So the government has had to row back on one of the other ones that were supposed to come in the phasing out of CE marking. CE standing for conformite Europe. It doesn't get more EU than that. Anyway, that was due to be phased out and it's now having to be extended. Basically, I think the regime that was going to replace it has taken some time to form a bit like some of the international trade agreements that we were supposed to replace our trading relationships with the EU. And so, yeah, it's going to be extended to June 2025. Rushnara Ali, minister with the wonderful job title of responsibility for building safety and homelessness. Strange to bracket every time. Anyway, she said, I can announce that the government will extend the period of recognition of sea marking for construction products. The CE mark will continue to be available when placing construction products on the market across the UK. The current government guidance sets out that recognition of CE marking will end in June 2025, which doesn't sound actually that.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Far away to me, so I wonder whether they're going to extend it again when we get to June 20.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah, watch this space. Who knows?
As with a lot of brexit things, it takes a lot to tie up the loose ends.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Okay, so give us another story. What's going on in your little world, Joe?
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Okay, well, we'll finish with a story that's close to my heart. Install a show, which is an annual trade event that's been commissioned diary of a tile Eddy's team to develop content, boost attendance, and increase cross industry communication has announced the formation of partnerships with the Flooring Industry Training association, better known as Fitta, the National Institute for Carpet and Floor Layers, and the Contract Flooring association.
The idea of these partnerships is to raise the profile of flooring amongst the various audience groups who attend the installer show, who all specify, install, or distribute flooring products. This news follows similar arrangements with trade associations representing the kitchen and worktop sectors and other strategic collaborations. You maybe can guess where I'm talking about are in the pipeline. I'm pretty excited about this because the installer show, and this is something I fully support, is trying to build a collaborative and collegiate framework for promoting best practice, technical excellence, and material advances. And when it comes to some of the issues we've spoken earlier, such as silicosis, this is how we're going to achieve success, how we're going to avoid preventable deaths. So I think it's really good news. Nathan Garnett, who's the business development director at Installer show, says bringing professionals and manufacturers from these sectors together to collaborate is going to help everyone and is the very heart of what the installer show is about. And yeah, I think it's good news. And, you know, the early signs are promising that we're going to put together an event with more than 800 exhibitors and over 30,000 attendees. So three halls of the NEC next June. So pretty cool.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, well, there's lots going to be coming out of that, I'm sure. So we look forward to hearing more about it. Okay, I think that's probably rounding it up for this week.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Just one little snippet. A fellow tarl addict went to a classical concert last week in a fabulous victorian hall on the south coast. At the end of it, his wife turned to him and said, did you enjoy the concert, dear? Oh, yes, he said, do you know there are 1176 encaustic tiles on the floor between the stage front and the stalls and only seven of them installed in the wrong direction.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: God, it must be like going away with you.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: There you go, folks.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Okay, thanks a lot, everybody. See you next week.
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