| 41
Above left: BSW’s Alchemy composite decking Above right: Megawood DELTA boards feature a crosswise structure, allowing boards to be installed without a gradient
largely restricted to their home, outdoor living space has been a key driver for the UK home improvement market. This has seen sales across all landscaping and outdoor consumer products hugely increase.”
This dramatic sales increase applied to Arbor’s traditional softwood Arbordeck timber decking and Trex.
Mr Cooper admitted assessing WPC’s decking market share was a difficult task but he said the value of Arbor’s Trex sales was now higher than its softwood decking sales. “The composite decking market overall continues to grow and we anticipate this will also be the case through 2021. UK homeowners continue to invest in their homes. Decking and landscape contractors are reporting record bookings and with long lead times well into 2021, so particularly for domestic contractors, we do not anticipate a reduction in demand in the short-term.” Felicity Hodgkinson, marketing manager of UK-manufactured Ecodek, noted that the significant shift in 2020 was to domestic sales, while commercial projects were on hold. “While commercial projects are now definitely back, the B2C is still very buoyant,” she said.
“The pandemic had a positive impact on sales to the domestic market, as was seen across the landscaping and DIY sector,” she continued. “As manufacturers, we were in a very strong position as we were not relying on dwindling stocks to fulfil orders, we were manufacturing pretty much the whole way through.”
BSW Timber is a UK manufacturer of WPC via its Alvic Plastics business based in Telford. “In the most extraordinary trading year, 2020 outperformed 2019 despite 90% of the merchant customer base closing for the Covid-19 lockdown in April,” it said. “Sales of composite decking recovered strongly throughout May and remained well
above 2019 order rates until the year end, buoyed by a furloughed British workforce enjoying the good weather and making the investment decision to improve their garden space at home.” Charles Taylor, sales director at Composite Prime, estimated WPC market share in mainland Europe to be around 50%, with the product growing significantly in the US. “I think we are at about 20% market share in the UK now and we expect that to grow over the next three to four years. I think softwood decking is still in the lead in terms of market sales, with it being more DIY, whereas composites are more specialist.” He sees the market always having room for softwood but predicted hardwood decking’s volume decline to continue, with the latter mainly going into commercial applications. Michael Stubbs and Roger Summer - UK technical and sales support for Germany’s NOVO-TECH GmbH – described NOVO-TECH’s 2020 sales as “phenomenal”. “We found an upsurge in Europe and most companies in the UK have had the same,” said Mr Stubbs. “This year is showing all the signs of continuing that trend.
“The lower end of the composites market is fighting the top end of the softwood market and the real quality composites are chipping away at hardwoods.”
PRODUCT TRENDS The WPC market has a diverse range of products, both hollow core and solid profile, many different colours and some with woodgrain effect for that authentic timber look.
Most feature a majority of wood flour content, combined with recycled or virgin plastic and binders manufactured in an extrusion process.
China, Germany and the US are the largest overseas suppliers to the UK, with BSW and
Ecodek among UK manufacturers. Demand for a capped product – an extra polymer surface layer – is increasing. “More and more homeowners are seeking an improved quality of composite decking, and are looking for a solid-board capped product that offers an improved level of quality and performance,” said Mr Cooper. “Capped boards offer stain, scratch and fade resistance. Product awareness amongst consumers and installers alike is rapidly increasing, as both become more wary of low-cost, poor-quality uncapped hollow core imports from China.”
There is a debate over solid profile versus hollow core and everyone has their preference but there are good products available in both types of construction. It is the low-quality products, typically some that originate from the Far East and which are sold direct to end-user, that have encountered problems in recent years with product failing. Ecodek is introducing a new capped composite range this year.
BSW Timber said WPC decking standards were improving and the market was trending towards next generation capped products, which also feature high levels of UV fade resistance and stain resistance. In 2021, BSW is poised to grow its share of the composite decking market further with the new Alchemy range of next generation domestic and commercial composite decking. NOVO-TECH, which makes the Megawood and EasyDeck brands, has had a busy innovation season, says Mr Stubbs. New is the Megawood DELTA board, which used recycled wind turbine blades in its composition (still with a majority wood flour content) in a 21 x 145mm size. Contours on the boards give it a cross- wise surface structure, allowing the board to be laid without any gradient. Water runs off cross-wise into the deck gaps. ►
www.ttjonline.com | March/April 2021 | TTJ
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73
