efficient and this is something that we want to try and change through education.” With energy bills rising from April 1, consumers are going to start thinking more carefully about the energy they use. “What we’ve heard from some energy


providers now is they may well offer a variable tariff, so if you use the energy at a time of the day or night, when demand is lower, you may pay less,” Mr Hide said. “This might get people thinking about when they use their appliances. “If you look at it over life of an appliance, it


may potentially help retailers sell up the price bands. There are plenty of examples where if you spend a few hundred Pounds more initially, if you have that budget available, over the life of an appliance, which is more than 10 years, you will save a lot more.” Mr Hide said another thing in-store to be


wary of is overselling to customers. He said: “Do people really need 10kg or 12kg


laundry machines and what capacity do they need for a fridge-freezer? “The obsession with buying bigger and bigger isn’t necessarily the right decision for everybody and rather than spending more on capacity, you might be better off to spend more on energy efficiency, because it’ll still do everything you need when you need it, but actually will cost you a lot more over the life of the product.” In March 2020, when the government announced the first lockdown, the appliance industry ground to a halt. “I was talking to manufacturers, and I’m sure


retailers were having the same considerations that they felt that 2020 could be 30-40% down on 2019, it could have been an absolute disaster,” Mr Hide said. “Of course, that never happened, because


pretty much immediately, the demand kept coming via online and clearly many retailers were pretty quickly able to adapt, not just those that were already in pure play to meet that demand. “We then saw a business boom and 2020


volume of appliances large and small was more than 10% up on 2019, at the end of the year, in spite of a big drop for a couple of months across April and May – 2021 was again up on on 2020.” More than 30 million large appliances were shipped into the UK market last year – the biggest figure there’s ever been in a single year. While we can’t keep seeing year-on-year


growth, Mr Hide said that the 2022 market – despite all the challenges – has every chance of being very similar in size to 2021. Because of the inevitable inflationary


pressures, the price of products is going to go up, which will help margins. Of course, retailer


March/April 2022


costs are increasing substantially as well, in terms of heating showrooms, fuelling vehicles and staff wages have to go up because of inflation. “We need a market where price is going up,”


Mr Hide said. “We always seem to be an industry that prides itself on bringing pricing down every year. We are finally in a position where all the talk is about price increases. “It was never the customer driving these


prices down, it was competition within the industry both from manufacturers and retailers. I think we’ve probably hit the bottom of the market on like-for-like pricing now, across the piece.” Mr Hide acknowledged that there have


been product shortages in the last three to six months. “However, the fact that the market has grown


to record levels, I think proves that there clearly haven’t been extreme shortages, because you can’t have the biggest ever market if you can’t get the stock,” he said. “The shortage came from record demand,


they haven’t come from poor supply, but, clearly, there’s a finite capacity out there.” There’s a semiconductor shortage that isn’t


going to go away in the next two years; that could even potentially get worse, because around 90% of the neon gas, comes from Russia. Mr Hide said that a number of manufacturers


are looking to come into the UK and EU markets. “For those new entrants, I think that’s where the value of a trade association is very strong, because they will need some support to ensure they are compliant and they understand that the regulations, and the trading protocols of entering the market and that’s something absolutely that Amdea can give a one-to-one hands-on support and service to. “We’re a relatively small trade association, but


it’s a big market, worth £2 billion in the UK and we have 38 members.” Mr Hide said Amdea’s job is to play an active


role in helping to shape and manage future regulation and policy. There are three key areas that we are working


on – product and user safety, sustainability and UK divergence. Turning to end of life products, Mr Hide said that the industry has to improve our collective behaviour on end of life disposal and recyclability. “Large appliances, because they tend to be


collected and swapped out when you buy a new one, go back to the recycling centre,” Mr Hide said. “Less than a third of small appliances are


recovered for recycling. We have to hold our hands up all of us as consumers and say our behaviour in separating small electrical waste is generally poor – it ends up in the incineration or landfill and that’s clearly not an acceptable approach.” Mr Hide said there’s now a requirement now


for producers to pay for packaging recycling and we’re moving towards, potentially, what’s called eco modulation. “This is where the recycling costs will be


linked to how easy and recyclable a product is,” Mr Hide said. “For products that are harder to recycle or packaging that’s harder to recycle, the cost will be higher to the producers. “We are moving into a world where there will be financial penalties for producers that basically make stuff that’s difficult to recycle, whether that’s packaging, or whether that’s the end material.”


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