Member Article

Plastic fantastic record year for UPVC plant  

Russell Roof Tiles dedicated UPVC manufacturing unit in Burton-on-Trent has produced a record seven million products over the last 12 months.

The 28,000 sq ft based at Bushton Works was acquired by the business in 1997 and manufactures plastic accessories for dry fixing and ventilation, including ridge, verge, hip and clips. Having its own factory enables the business to manage its own supply chain and the increase in UPVC output reflects Russell Roof Tiles overall growth in sales and specifically dry-fix.

Russell Roof Tile has just invested £85,000 in injection moulding machinery for the UPVC plant to help gear up to meet growing demand for dry-fix solutions to ensure roofing complies with the change to building regulation requirements that come into force at the end of February. This follows an investment in £160,000 in additional new tooling for the UPVC plant in 2013.

The New British Standard Code of practice for tiling and slating, BS 5534:2014 was published last August this year and becomes mandatory shortly. The key aim of the changes is to increase roof integrity and security as we face increasingly adverse weather conditions. The standard will bring the UK in line with the equivalent Eurocodes.

As a result of these changes the use across the sector of fixings of tiles, ridges and hips will increases – as all interlocking tiles will require a minimum of two mechanical fixings around the perimeters. The standard also increases the demand for dry-fix products as opposed to mortar bedding.

Alex Gilroy, National Operations Support Manager at Russell Roof Tiles commented “The investment in new machinery at the UPVC factory has improved production efficiencies which has helped achieve record outputs and follows increased demand for Russell Roof Tiles dry-fix products such as Russfast.

Russell Roof Tiles manufactures on three state of the art plants, in Burton-on-Trent and in Lockerbie. The firm makes a range of concrete roof tiles and fittings for leading UK house builders, social housing and commercial projects and employs a team of 160 across its three sites and this year celebrates 50 years of manufacturing.

Russell Roof Tiles has a growing list of projects successfully completed for private housing as well as local authority and specialist housing associations across the country.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Kathryn Greenwood .