Tilescast News 2024 July 19

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Tilecast news, features and analysis brought to. [00:00:04] Speaker B: You by diary Vitaladict so hello tile addicts, and welcome to this week's Tile cast news for the weekend of 19 July 2024. 1st bit of housegiving as usual. Don't forget to subscribe and follow the podcast to make sure you don't miss an episode each week. It is the most important half hour of your week and I think we can probably claim to be the world's best independent and possibly only tile news podcast. So, you know, this is the one you really need to be listening to anyway. Hello jo. [00:00:51] Speaker C: Good morning everyone. [00:00:53] Speaker B: What's been going on? [00:00:55] Speaker C: Well, the first story I'm going to highlight today is particularly close to my heart because it involves two companies that diary of et al, Adicht and myself have been collaborating with over the last few years, media Ten, the owners of UK Construction Week and Clerkenwell Design Week and QMJ, who are the owners of Stone show and hard surfaces. And the good news is that they have formed a new collaboration. This means that from next year, hard surfaces and the Stone show will be running alongside UK Construction week at Excel, London's exhibition centre. I think this is particularly good news because UK construction Week attracts over 21,000 visitors. It has a lot of seminars, live demonstrations and 400 exhibitors. Put that together with the long established benefits of the stone show and hard surfaces, and I think you have a really good synergy, greater strength. This is certainly what Sam Patel, the director of UK Construction Week at Media Ten, said. The co location is an exciting proposition for the architecture and design community, developers, fabricators and contractors. And he says he's going to be looking forward to working with Richard and his talented team to help them fulfill their ambition of growing their community and building on what is already a market leading event for the sector. So that in itself is very good news. But perhaps even better news, or a more obvious collaboration, is that media Ten also were the organizers of Concrete Expo, whereas QMJ recently bought the uk concrete show. And as part of this collaboration, they're going to be putting these two events together to create a mega concrete show, which seems to make incredible sense. I mean, the, the UK, it's a great market concrete, but you don't really need two events. Get one really single concentrated event that serves the whole breadth of the concrete market and you're on to a winner. And certainly that's what Richard Bradbury believes. He's the managing director of the QMJ Group and he said, we're excited to have this opportunity to expand the show further. The acquisition of Concrete Expo allows us to deliver the event to even more visitors and exhibitors than ever before, accelerating our development plans. And QMJ are planning to announce a range of new partnerships and visitor features over the coming months. I think it's good news. I mean I think in all of. I do believe in exhibitions, as everyone will know, but I think fewer, stronger exhibitions has got to be the way to go. And in the construction sector it's hugely beneficial to have good footfall. It makes everybody feel better, it makes people commit more resources to the shows and it then almost as a result, it makes them better events. So good news all round. [00:03:42] Speaker B: So when and where roughly are those events? Well, they presumably weren't concurrent originally, so one of them must have changed its date, right? [00:03:49] Speaker C: Yeah, well, they've announced the dates for next year and I'll be posting up all of these details on Diary of a tar laddict in the coming days. Won't bore everyone with all the details now, but there was a pretty close alignment between them, so that's why it seemed like an obvious fit. They were weeks apart rather than months. Apartheid part. But aligning them makes absolute solid sense. [00:04:10] Speaker B: So that's. That's very good news and I'm sure there'll be lots to talk about going forward on that. Sticking with the UK, you know, the government is now fully ensconced in its. Its role and it's been cracking on. We had the king's speech this week. Was there anything useful in there? [00:04:24] Speaker C: There was a lot of good news, I think, for the construction industry and generally there's been a very favorable reaction to it. Once again, I'll be posting up more details on diary of a tile addict in the next few days. But I mean, the things that really struck everybody was the ambition on housing delivery, which has been very welcome, and the proposals about smoothing, speeding up the planning process, which has basically been the biggest constraint on house building in recent years. The House Builders Federation chief executive Neil Jefferson certainly seemed to be positive. He said the measures proposed will address the main areas of concern by bringing more land forward for development more quickly. I think there are a couple of areas that possibly people still have concerns about. One is quite where are we going to find all the skilled workers to build these 1.5 million new homes? And secondly, why there wasn't equal emphasis placed on refurbishment and upgrading our pretty poor housing stock. But my guess is that we will address. The government will address that going forward. [00:05:23] Speaker B: Okay, well, we're interested in the listeners views on this as well. So perhaps if people want to contact us with any thoughts they have on how it's impacted their business or will impact their business going forward, then that would be really interesting. [00:05:36] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And we're also interested in news and people that are going to be investing to take advantage of this new positive atmosphere, which there definitely is a palpable sense of optimism, largely because some decisions have been made, some of the uncertainties being taken out of the equation, and basically, we all know what needs to be done. So there's now no reason for not getting on with it. [00:05:57] Speaker B: So I go, there's been a Glenigan forecast has been revealed. [00:06:01] Speaker C: Yes. [00:06:01] Speaker B: Does that suggest. [00:06:02] Speaker C: Well, Glenaghan, who is the construction industry's leading insight and intelligence experts, I think it's fair to say that they certainly think that the new government ushers in a brighter outlook for the construction. They're projecting a 7% project start boost in 2025 and a further 6% increase in 2026. The key takeaway from the forecast is that the construction industry will face near term challenges, such as the slow economic growth and persistently highest interest rates, and that these will constrain private sector investment and delay public sector projects, but that the forecast will brighten going forward and that the reduction in political uncertainty is going to have a big kick on effect to the industry. Again, I'll be putting the details of Glenigan's forecast, but it's generally, after quite a few years of pretty negative news, it's positive. [00:06:52] Speaker B: And real estate agent saviles have also published a report. [00:06:56] Speaker C: Yeah, savilles are predicting that there's going to be a big build to rent explosion because only a fifth of the 20 billion pound that was due to be invested in this sector was actually put into play between 2018 and 2023. And so they are seeing that in the first quarter of 2024, already been the highest proportion of investment into build to rent schemes since 2015, and that they think this is going to really ramp up now. [00:07:22] Speaker B: Right. So it's been pent up demand and actually now the demand is even greater. [00:07:26] Speaker C: It's both pent up demand and pent up investment. So the past decade has seen something like 35 billion pounds of institutional investment in this area, which has delivered around 100,000 built to rent homes. But of the 20 billion invested in the last five years, actually only a fifth has actually so far been utilized. You know, you can do the maths yourselves. There's four fifths ready to go and there's really now nothing to stop it. So there's around another 110,000 buy to rent homes planned, which is the largest number recorded so far. So we may well see this sector beginning to peak. [00:07:59] Speaker B: Right, that's very good news. But I gather there's a bit of bad news for one company. [00:08:05] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I mean, it's kind of inevitable. It's often when things turn around that you see the greatest number of failures, actually, rather than at the start of bad economic symptoms. It's often when things are getting better that the final nail is found. And so the scottish facade specialists Charles Henshaw and son has gone into administration. I mean, it's not a massive company, we're talking about 70 employers, but it's a long established name. It's been going. Started Edinburgh 120 years ago, initially in decorative architectural metalwork, but in 1982 it launched an aluminium glazing system and then veered off into curtain walling. And it's worked on a number of really high profile companies, the University of Glasgow amongst others. And there's an insolvency partner, Shona Campbell at Henderson Logie, has been appointed administrator for the business and they are actively seeking buyers for the business and its assets. I mean, Charles Henshaw and Son has got a solid reputation, extensive product portfolio. So it's not impossible that a buyer will be found because the facade market definitely has massive potential in the UK. [00:09:12] Speaker B: They sound like they were in quite a niche of that. [00:09:15] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, they're scottish facades, but if you think of the buildings, the, you know, the buildings that spring to mind in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the quality of facades is one of their distinguishing features. So, you know, there's going to be plenty of work, both new build and refurb, one would think. So I think there's a good chance that this one will have a happy ending. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Well, let's hope there's a buyer found then. And if you're the buyer, tell us all about it. Okay, so the USA summit on sustainability, is there anything to report from that? For now. Are you putting that all onto the website? [00:09:45] Speaker C: No, they haven't announced it. Today's the final day of the summit, so this week it was yesterday and today, so it's a bit early for that. But I mean, obviously I'm interested in it because it was bringing together the tile council of North America, the Natural Stone Institute, the National Wood Flooring association and the North American Laminate Flooring association under one umbrella. They're looking at the sustainability issue and sustainability is going to be one of the drivers in our industry. And I just thought it was interesting that this week, a couple of stories dropped into my in tray, which had a very strong sustainability angle. They're really effectively product news as opposed to company news. But Lamenam, who, the italian based people who really put the thin porcelain sheet on the market, they've been doing a lot in this area, and they sent through a whole release about their sustainability, which address a lot of the things you might expect. New pv arrays, water recycling. Da de da da da da. But the one that really struck me was that they are, they are going to launch the first two millimeter thick ceramic sheet. Now, we've seen a lot of three 4.5 and thicker sheets, but two mil is going to be a really interesting, and I think, potentially revolutionary step. And why do I think that apart from the thinness, it's very light. [00:11:01] Speaker B: So. [00:11:01] Speaker C: So lightness has two benefits. One, it makes it more applicable to the furniture industry, and also it's cheaper to transport tick, tick. The other one is that it can be used in slightly different areas. It's not simply, oh, you used to make it three mil thick. So we'll just put one mil less dust in before you press it. This is not an easy technological advancement. You've got to change the body mix in the spray dry powder, you've got to change how it's pressed, you've got to change how it's transported around the factory. You've got to change the firing profile files and everything from gluing, packaging and logistics. So, you know, it's not an easy thing to achieve, otherwise everybody would have done it by now. But the good news is it's going to mean that the surfaces have a lower environmental impact over their entire life cycle, because not only they're using less material, they're going to use less energy, less water and produce less waste. So I think it's a really significant development. It's, you know, it's going to take a while before this is out on the market, but it points the direction through. We've already seen tiles getting thinner and thinner. When these big sheets of get thinner, I think it not only is it going to have those obvious benefits, but you're going to find more and more furniture manufacturers thinking, why use melamine faced chipboard when you can use porcelain? [00:12:13] Speaker B: Right, okay. And there was another environmental product as well. [00:12:17] Speaker C: Yeah, this is an interesting one. I like this one for two reasons. One, it's UK based tick, tick, and it's about manufacturing tick, tick again, because we don't have a lot of great UK manufacturing stories at the moment. There's basically a manufacturer. Enviro board has announced plans to bring a carbon negative building board to the construction industry. The technology was developed in Denmark, but Enviroborg apparently have now the intellectual property rights. That's good news. And it uses recycled paper sludge. Not a particularly attractive phrase, but, you know, you can see why it might be beneficial. That's the raw material for building these boards. This is a secondary waste material that would usually end up in landfill or be burnt and is apparently free from toxins and environmentally safe. [00:13:00] Speaker B: And these boards are what's their applicability? [00:13:03] Speaker C: Right. I mean, essentially, as I understand, I mean, this is very new. I haven't seen one of these boards, I've seen a picture of them and I've read a press release. But the idea is it's an alternative to plasterboard. [00:13:13] Speaker B: Right, but so about time we had an alternative to plasterboard. [00:13:17] Speaker C: Absolutely. And one that is made from, which also deals with the waste disposal challenges of the paper recycling industry, is itself totally part of the circular economy because it can be completely reused, which is the only one who knows. You know, plasterboard has a lot of issues when it comes to recycling and it doesn't require mining or any other environmentally challenging extraction and it doesn't require specialist recycling at end of life. So other benefits, it's said to reduce the carbon emissions compared to disposing of the waste or creating new boards in any other may. And it can be recycled to produce new boards endlessly. So it seems like a win win. I mean, I'm sure it's not as simple as that, but to me, a building board that can be allowed to biograde naturally if you need it to be, that also is acoustically, has acoustic benefits, has fire retardant properties, apparently very good impact resistance, and is flexible, quick, clean and easy to install, handle and finish. Sounds like a winner. [00:14:16] Speaker B: It also sounds like the press release. So we need to know, we need to look at this one in detail, don't we, and see where all these tests are. [00:14:23] Speaker C: It is, you know, I intend to follow up on it, but. And obviously for the tiling sector, what we really need is a waterproof one that can be used as a tile backing board. You know, and if I was developing this product, I'd be investigating that. But at the moment, they're really in the seed funding area. They're looking to raise 2 million pounds to support the expansion of its UK manufacturing, the construction of a mini plant. And they're working with the Institute of Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge, which he done a report on market feasibility. And apparently they've already got the supply chain in place with a company called Palm Paper in Kings Lynn and they've got distribution deals in the pipeline from Scandinavia and other areas. So, you know, potentially this is a good story. But as Janet so carefully points out, you know, it's. This is down the pipe. Sorry, but our phone system is vaping. [00:15:14] Speaker B: There must be some power cuts somewhere. We're on battery power at the moment, so we're not affected. Okay, that sounds like a good news story to finish on and one that definitely needs following up and probably also websiteing on dio vital edit. [00:15:28] Speaker C: Absolutely. No, I mean, you'll find on tile addict we do like to cover other interesting hard surfaces, not just tile. This sounds like one of them because I think it's going to be quite an interesting development. [00:15:37] Speaker B: Brilliant. Well, I think it's time to go and sort out that machine. So that's it for this week. We're trying to keep it brief, trying to keep it always within half an hour. Don't forget to listen. Every week, don't forget to subscribe and follow us. And don't forget to send Joe information and news that he can then look through and see what he feels is relevant for the tile addicts. [00:15:56] Speaker C: So that's very important. Yep. So please send it to tile ukol.com. that's tileukol.com. bye now. [00:16:03] Speaker B: That's brilliant. Thanks very much. [00:16:06] Speaker A: You've been listening to Tilecast, produced by Dario Tile Addict. To ensure you don't miss any future episodes, don't forget to follow us. You can also find show notes and receive updates on newsfeeds, articles, podcasts and videos direct to your inbox by subscribing to the Diaryofataladdict.com website. Get the inside track at diary of a tile addict.