It might be a notoriously price sensitive market, but some lintel manufacturers are determined to make their brands the must-haves on more than cost alone.
Production Innovation, market pushes and corporate mergers are not immediately synonymous with the lintels market but have seen it become an unexpectedly exciting arena of late. It all started when Dorman Long, the lintel-producing arm of British Steel, completed the £13·6m purchase of market leader Catnic from Caradon earlier this year.
The move – which, as promised, has seen business continue as usual at the £27m turnover, Caerphilly-based Catnic – affirmed Dorman Long’s desire to push its sales on brand rather than price. “We want to be seen as specialists, capable of providing technical specifications and the right answers to customer questions,” says a Dorman Long spokesman. “That’s why we’ve opted to distribute through a small number of specialist distributors rather than go through the builders merchant route. Back up is all-important.”
Also chasing a slice of the £100m lintel business is IG which, like its competitor, has adopted a brand strengthening strategy in a bid to grow its market share. “During the recession IG decided to implement plans to improve production efficiency and strengthen its marketing and sales effort in order to win a greater share of a static market,” says an IG spokeswoman. “The focus is on total lintel service aimed at offsetting the effects of price-only competition, but it’s a difficult task in a price-led market.”
Despite the ongoing merger of British Steel and Dutch counterpart Hoogovens, neither company believes it will have much effect on lintel pricing. “It is difficult to see how further depression of the price of steel lintels is in anybody’s real interest,” according to IG. “While the market is dominated by two major players there is a point beyond which greater market share cannot be economically achieved, nor realistically defended.”
Dorman Long
The Ecolintel was designed by British Steel to improve the thermal performance of lintels by reducing the effect of thermal bridging in the area above windows and doors. A thermal gasket, made from reclaimed PVCu, eliminates cold spots and one-piece construction ensures the required structural performance.
Haddonstone
Haddonstone produces high quality decorative stonework and its standard head designs – plain-ended or tapered, plain-ended with integral keystone and tapered with integral keystone – suit a three-brick course height in a normal cavity wall situation. They are available in lengths from 460 mm to 1810 mm. Cills suit two-brick course heights. Haddonstone offers downloadable technical data on its products from its Internet site on www.haddonstone.co.uk while pledging that its reconstructed limestone material, similar to Portland stone, is “significantly cheaper” than quarried stone.
Marshalls
New profiling machinery has enabled Marshalls to bolster its natural stone offerings, including specials for architectural features. “For luxury home builders, this means they can create truly unique designs that can be manufactured in Yorkstone,” explains a Marshalls’ spokeswoman. Designs and production runs previously considered prohibitively expensive and time consuming using traditional methods are now feasible thanks to the profiling equipment. Its AutoCad-compatible machinery can produce complex shapes quickly and in large quantities. The hard, dense properties of Yorkstone make it a durable and high performance material.
