New perspective on Irish Window and Door Market

Mike Rigby talks to Paul O'Sullivan, Managing Director of National Profiles, about the development of the Irish window market and its significance to companies in the UK.

It seems hard to credit, but Ireland was once a dumping ground for UK systems companies.

In the 1980s, Ireland was a small, isolated and difficult market with a weak economy.

Getting paid was a challenge.

Most PVC-U systems companies used it to offload excess volume or old systems at low prices with next to no support, knowing that whatever they did was too far away to rebound on them.

Systems companies knew little of the Irish market and didn't see any point in learning while the UK market was large and growing.

How times have changed! Out of sight and out of mind, the bleak 1980s gave way to a prosperous Celtic Tiger in the 1990s.

By the dotcom crash in 2000/1, the Irish economy was transformed.

Its core of international businesses centred on finance, pharmaceuticals, IT and software was strong enough to sail through with the fastest growth rate in Europe.

A century or more of net emigration reversed into net immigration as a highly educated workforce returned to find well paid jobs and somewhere to live.

A big new build housing market.

At its peak in 2006 the new house build market, excluding Northern Ireland, was just over 93,400.

That's about half that of the UK for a population one twelfth of the UK's.

Some of the froth was blown off the housing market in 2007, but still 78,000 new units were built.

House prices fell 7.3% in 2007, and activity is much weaker currently.

Some are forecasting just 35,000 units for 2008.

It's a big drop, but that is still more than twice the rate per person we build in the UK.

The market is expected to pick up in the second half of 2008.

Despite current market weakness, construction is a more important part of the economy than in the UK.

Apartments, houses, offices, business parks, warehouses, roads and flyovers are being built everywhere.

Irish building related firms have prospered in Ireland and expanded in the UK and Europe.

National Profiles builds to keep customers growing.

I met Paul O'Sullivan, Managing Director of National Profiles , Ireland's leading profile distributor to see for myself how the market has changed and to hear how he expects it to develop.

National Profiles distributes profile for System 10, Ultraframe and Smart Systems and has recently taken on the distribution for Spectus, North and South of the Border.

We met as a smart new business park, distribution centre and offices was being built across the road from the existing premises to ensure the company could continue its record of substantial growth.

The impressive development is in Mallow, County Cork.

For efficiency, traffic is one-way through the new centre to simplify and speed up loading of its articulated trucks.

The new premises will also help to future-proof the distributor by providing the facilities and space to handle the fast changing profile and product mix.

"Northern Ireland took longer to respond to the Peace Dividend," Paul O'Sullivan explains, "but its growth has been faster than the rest of the UK in the last ten years".

"The biggest barrier now is the Irish Sea, which we do have to take account of - poor weather disrupts sea crossings".

"Because of disruptions to supply, we carry a lot of stock so our customers can fabricate whatever the weather".

"We carry large volumes of profile for other reasons too".

""Colour is a high proportion of a fabricator's business with around 50% of total frames supplied, North and South, in a wide variety of colours, including red, blue, green, grey, black and brown, as well woodgrains and more subtle shades.

If we supply 12 or more colours in addition to white, we have to carry all the associated profiles and components for the different types of windows and doors in each colour.

That's a lot.

Colour could grow from 50% to 70%".

"The swing to colour is continuing".

"Many think it could hit 70% quite quickly".

"Five years ago it was 20%, similar to Scotland, but people got tired of white for everything, and installers realised that homeowners would pay more for colour if they were given a choice, so it's a big opportunity".

Colour is growing quickly in the UK, although it is some way behind Ireland, but for the same reasons I believe it is likely to go the same way".

"Our service and support has to be as good as a systems company's," Paul continued".

"We are expected to trouble shoot as well as support them in winning new business and specifications across Ireland".

"Our support is what a fabricator would expect from a premium systems company".

"Reversibles and vertical sliders growing too".

Increasingly Ireland is becoming a single market, with benefits all around.

Many of our customers are in the North.

Through them for example we are a major supplier of two reversible windows to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.

The window market is not the same as in the UK, although the Scottish market is also different, but the markets are converging in many respects.

Vertical sliders are growing and may also be a relatively bigger market than in the UK.

"We calculate that around 70,000 windows and doors a week were manufactured and imported into Ireland during 2006".

"This dropped back to 60,000 units a week in 2007, although we have not yet finalised the figures".

"Nearly 80% is PVC-U, 12-15% aluminium and the rest is timber and aluminium-wood composites".

"The figures exclude curtain walling and shop fronts, which are nearly all aluminium".

"A market with lots of scope to grow".

""The North accounts for around 25% of windows and doors installed, but it produces perhaps 35% of total frames made by large fabricators such as Camden, Superseal and Dessian.

Ireland is not big compared to the British window and door market, but it has considerable scope for growth.

Saturation is relatively low at around 50%, compared with the 85% or so for the UK.

On the way to No.1".

"Our calculations show that National Profiles had about 12% market share in 2007 based on tonnage to manufacture windows and doors".

"We expect this to have increased to over 15% by the end of 2008 with growth from Spectus and System 10".

"That would put us in third position by tonnage alongside Camden and Munster Joinery, although as both of them are manufacturers that would make us the No.1 distributor in Ireland.

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