MERCHANT FOCUS: MANNINGHAM CONCRETE
(NOT) THE NAME OF THE GAME
Fiona Russell Horne meets a family-run firm in Bradford that’s got more to it than you might think
“W e’re not in
Manningham and we don’t sell concrete. Apart from that, it’s
a great name.” So says Alan Tomlinson, managing director of Manningham Concrete, the Bradford builders’ merchants he runs alongside his brother Andrew, who is chairman of the company.
“We very much run the business between the two of us,” Andrew Tomlinson says. Even down to the job titles: they are split the way they are because, when they took over the roles, there was a structural need for a managing director role and a chairman role, and Alan got his business cards done first, bagging the managing director title. The company may not sell concrete, but it does sell kitchens, timber, bricks, insulation, plumbing materials, all the things you would expect a mixed builder’s merchant to offer. The business is called Manningham Concrete because when it was set up, in the early 1900s, it was to manufacture ash blocks from clinker produced at Lister’s Mill in Bradford, and then expanded its operations to include the production of concrete products. Manningham came into the Tomlinson family hands in 1963, when the brothers’ father and uncle, Ronnie and George Tomlinson, who were joiners and customers, bought the company which would otherwise have gone under, in order to maintain the continuity of supply to their joinery business.
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“We opened up a small satellite branch on the other side of the city in 2007 on an industrial site that has grown from one to four units,” Alan Tomlinson explains. Currently all are struggling with the traffic and transport links, as the city is undergoing a regeneration and infrastructure transformation under the 2025 European City of Culture programme. It‘s probably the biggest regeneration the city has seen since it grew up in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, and it makes travel between branches really quite tricky. Manningham joined the h&b Buying Group in 2008 when, with the economy not going to plan in the wake of the financial crash, it looked as though working together with other like-minded merchants would be the way to get through the difficulties. Since then Manningham Concrete has played an active role in the group’s Roofing and Insulation Committee, with Alan taking a seat on the h&b board in 2022
“At that time we didn’t really do much with roofing materials,” he says, “and there were a couple of the other h&b merchants that did, though there wasn’t a committee as such. So we set up a roofing committee and basically grew that aspect of the h&b business, amalgamating it with insulation. It was a good fit for our business, we already had relationships with many of the other merchants, and many of the suppliers. It’s been a great benefit to us, but we’ve also been able to bring value to the group as well.” Alan Tomlinson joined the family firm straight from school, aged 16, and worked his way through the company in various departments, ending up in charge of the
In 1970, the business moved to the current head office site, in Cemetery Road, Bradford, which was a greenfield site, bringing in more general merchanting products, and turning the old Manningham branch into the timber merchants.
When Tomlinson senior passed away, his brother’s heart wasn’t really in it anymore, so the management of Manningham Concrete passed to Alan and Andrew, who have continued to grow the business. Currently there are four branches, with timber machining carried out at a site in Allerton. The branches are situated around Bradford, catering for tradesmen and building companies across the city. Bradford is a city dissected by one huge road, and customers from one side of the city would never go across the city to buy their building materials, so it was important that the company had operations in both parts.
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net December 2023
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