16 INDUSTRY NEWS


Innovation is the key to Keystone Group’s 35 years of success


The Keystone Group is celebrating 35 years supplying innovative products to the construction sector, having grown rapidly to a £300m-plus turnover per annum company with over 2,000 employees across its 27 sites. The Group’s brands include Keystone Lintels, IG Lintels and IG Masonry Support, as well as eylite oof Windows, martroof, eyfi , and Keywall, and recent acquisition Showersave, which manufactures waste water heat recovery systems. The company’s journey began in 1989 when chairman Sean Coyle founded Keystone Lintels in Cookstown, Northern Ireland. His vision was to create “smart construction solutions beyond equal that meet the evolving needs of the construction industry, alongside eceptional customer service. Now the owner of 111 design patents, and with 125 staff dedicated to design and 35 product awards to its name, the company says this focus on innovation is “still at the heart of the Keystone Group  years later.


Housebuilder & Developer was invited to attend eystone roup’s head offi ce in Cookstown, and spoke to various representatives from the fi rm’s divisions


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to hear about how it had innovated over the years to fi nd solutions to the industry’s challenges. We also heard from the group’s chief commercial offi cer and son of the company’s founder) Sean Og Coyle, about the ambitious plans for this already successful fi rm. e ascribed the rapid growth seen at Keystone Group down to an approach of “putting the thought and the R&D and the effort into listening to customers every time we launched something. e said this rigorous approach had seen a series of step changes in the roup’s success over its 35 years.


Initially founded to plug a major gap in the steel lintel market in Ireland, within a couple of years the fi rm was the market leader across the island. In 1997 Keystone epanded with a manufacturing site in Birmingham, before moving to a bigger facility in Swadlincote in 2002. Keystone Group took a sideways strategic move into making roof windows in 2001, launching Keylite roof windows as a huge opportunity, as there was an absence of similar manufacturers in Western Europe. Sean said that roof windows represents a potential £250m market in the UK and €500 in France


alone, and hinted that the fi rm would be broadening its horizons to other countries. e eplained that a lot of the other step change growth for eystone came via acquisitions of timber brands, which include Wyckham Blackwell, Timber Innovations, Crendon Timber Engineering, Glosford SIPS, Harmony Timber, David Smith St Ives, Roof Truss and yn russed afters. ll of these individual brands had their own pre- eisting products. e admitted not all product launches always worked, but “we were always innovating, and some really took off. e added We never stood still or rested on our laurels. The company prides itself on succeeding based on relentless innovation within its own brands, resulting in 111 patents. However Coyle admitted that this can be high-risk based on the investment required in their development, without any guarantee they will succeed commercially. Showersave, the recently acquired brand of Dutch-manufactured waste water heat recovery systems, is one eample of a pre-eisting innovation eystone now offers as an effi cient low carbon solution for the upcoming Future Homes Standard.


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