MERCHANT FOCUS
PLASTIC FANTASTIC
Senior reporter Rachel Tucker met with Wendy Hill, director of General Building Plastics to see how the merchant is managing growth in a challenging industry.
Directors Janet Sutherland, Alan Sutherland and Wendy Hill.
founded in 1990. A retailer and specialist supplier of quality low maintenance building products to the trade and DIY sectors, it has trade counters in Banbury, Kettering Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Walsall, and Rugeley, Staffordshire.
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“We opened with one branch in Rugeley and then opened another soon after in Shrewsbury as we were making so many deliveries there it made sense to have a base. Next came the Walsall branch, which took a little while to establish, but is now doing well. Branch number four was in Banbury and then we waited the recession out before opening Oswestry and Kettering. But, with six branches in the Midlands, we are really accessible wherever in the region our customers are based,” says director Wendy Hill. “We have always been ambitious about growing, but at a controlled and sustainable pace, and allowing establish. We’d like to be the region’s go-to independent building products supplier, with enough branches so
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B Plastics is a £4 million turnover, second-generation family business
GBP Rugeley branch and headquarters “
“We’d like to be the region’s go-to independent building products supplier”
that, if you’re in the Midlands and you want building plastics and materials, then there’s a GB Plastics close enough for you to be able to use. That’s our long-term goal, but, as with our expansion to date, this will be self- funded,” says Hill.
In 2015, its 25th anniversary year, GBP won the Best Small Family Business of the Year in the annual Red Ribbon Awards, and the family ethos is something which has always been close to them. “My mum created GBP when my dad had a window company and my mum looked after sourcing and
buying all the plastics supplies. Sadly mum and dad separated but mum wanted to continue with GBP. Alan Sutherland (my brother) and I have worked in the business since it’s very early days - GBP started in April 1990, Alan joined in the July and I started in the September, and our sister now works in the business too.” Hill’s mother, Janet Sutherland, still works at the company part time.
does some of the accounts and wages. However, “she’s got such an amazing knowledge, she’s really brilliant at
June 2017 BMJ
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