House Builder

Kestrel© has announced a national exclusive supply agreement with the Gladedale Group for its ranges of PVC-UE foiled boards and trims for fascias and soffits. The Gladedale Group has a reputation for quality home building in England and Scotland, and this significant agreement demonstrates Kestrel’s dynamic advance within a very competitive market.

Gladedale Homes incorporates Furlong Homes, Bett Homes, Manor Kingdom, North Country Homes, Furlong City,and Country and Metropolitan.

“We have put together a unique service and supply solution for Gladedale that not only provides PVC-UE at market competitive prices, but can deliver up to a 17% saving through control of wastage and better fitting practice,” comments Laurence Hicks, Kestrel’s new build - business development manager. “We showed how we could make life easier and less expensive for Gladedale. It also has definite sustainability benefits through waste control.”

“We are very happy to conclude this agreement with Kestrel,” adds Martin Sanwell, Group Procurement Manager for the Gladedale Group. “Their production and warehouse facilities are highly impressive with much new investment. The high quality boards have excellent environmental credentials and they have developed unique products like the scalloped barge boards which attracted our attention. The care with which they have put together the package to suit our requirements has given us every confidence in the success of our relationship.”

The Kestrel site supply package will start with the individual analysis of Gladedale’s different home design requirements for PVC-UE boards and trims, made by the Kestrel© in-house technical design team. When a building development is started, the relevant packages, bundled individually per house design unit, are called off and delivered direct to site via national distributor SIG to a re-arranged schedule, and kept in Kestrel’s unique, lockable site-safe.

In addition, a Kestrel technician visits each site prior to installation, to ensure the packages delivered correlate with the house designs that are being built on the site. The technician will also demonstrate to the site management and the builder’s installation team exactly how the house package is to be used for each design.

Further, for the initial phase of the contract, the technician will make a careful, on-site evaluation of each housing unit design and look for ways of reducing the requirement for PVC-UE products through expert lean-design analysis techniques. The analysis will be fed back into the design process, ensuring long term savings.

“Our package will limit the stock held on site,“ continues Laurence, “and will minimise the damage and pilfering which gets worse the longer stock hangs around on site. It should also greatly deter the standard practice of installers which is to grab any piece of board and cut it to shape and size to fit an application, no matter whether that piece of board was originally supplied for that application.

“We calculate the amount of unnecessary wastage should be cut by at least 17%, through our design and supply service package. By thinking through and developing the whole concept, we are creating a best practice service that should make the Gladedale sites more efficient and less affected by human error and variability.”

“Gladedale is a prestigious name to partner,” adds Kestrel’s Sales and Marketing Director Tony Crutcher. “In a highly competitive market, winning increased market share is a challenge, but it’s one that Kestrel is now in a good shape to achieve.

“We are building on a well-established reputation for quality and value in ‘fitter-friendly’ products with continual product innovation, particularly with colour match and durability, and more environmentally friendly than some of our competition.. Our new era of growth and investment for Kestrel© is reflected in our new website.”