NEWS EXTRA
cement, concrete roof tiles and clay bricks from the group’s Kingscourt Brick arm.
He says that, in 2011 when he joined, the company was shipping around 1 million tiles a year across the Irish Sea. “Now, in a typical year, that would now be around 8.5-9m tiles a year, assuming they are available. We’ve been at that level regardless of market conditions for about the last four or five years.
“That of course is both a blessing and a curse: it’s great to be able to sell everything that you’ve got, but the problem is that you can’t grow the business if you don’t have the capacity.” Hence the need for the new plant. In 2018 the Lagan Group was acquired by Breedon, who clearly saw the potential in the market and the roof tile investment was duly made. “We now have a plant that is capable of making 22m tiles a year, 122 tiles a minute, working 24/7, that gives 60,000tiles day. This plant is state of the art. It’s a game changer for the company, and means we really can compete in the wider market,” he says. The plant is not only state-of- the-art in terms of technology, it also ticks the environmental boxes, having a far smaller environmental footprint. Most of the water is reused, there’s LED lighting throughout the plant. “We can recover lost energy which we could never do before, we have highly efficient condensing boilers, everything now is monitored and measured so we have very close eyes on how efficiently the plant is running, and we’re incorporating wind and solar power on site,” Morris says.
“The big plus for us going forward, is that historically the markets have really taken off in the past, I gave customers what I said I would, but that wasn’t necessarily all that they wanted because we were capped and limited by the capacity. “So at least we know that there will be a lot more tiles available going forward.
“The plan will be to fill the yard with tiles and rebuild Breedon’s stocks to a more sustainable level. Most merchants now are carrying less stock, so there is less strain on their working capital, which
means we need to have enough stock to supply them when they need it,” he says.
A current three-week lead time on tiles will hopefully be reduced to a few days, Morris adds, once stock levels rise from their current 600,000 to 2.5million. The plant will produce
Breedon’s four main tile profiles, two flat, one roman and one square. Anthractite is the most popular colour, with Antique Red, Brown and Plain Red also available, all of them as options on a mixed delivery load. “The range of profiles and colours we can offer now, coupled with the introduction of new profiles, will increase our appeal to the market,” Morris says. There are also plans to introduce a low pitch version, hopefully by the Summer. “This is something we are being asked for more and more, and it will go down to 15degrees. Plus, Genron, our solar tile, is now starting to give us real traction,” he says.
Genron is an actual solar tile, as opposed to a panel, and is produced in partnership with a Hungarian company called Teran. Morris adds: “We all know that solar is going to take a big chunk of the roofing sector, possibly up to 25%.” BMJ
March 2024
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net 9
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
