WE ARE CHALLENGED
From COVID-19, to BREXIT and supply shortages, we've all faced our toughest challenges to date...
READ MOREWE'RE THINKING ABOUT YOUR FUTURE, AND OURS
Our 2025 strategic goals are centred around you, our customers, striving to ensure longevity and reliability...
READ MOREBE OUR GUEST, VIRTUALLY
We've missed you coming to see us, so we've brought our factory to you...
READ MOREHAVE YOU EXPERIENCED WINDOPLAN YET
Available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, our industry-leading self serve tool to save you time and money...
READ MOREWE CARE ABOUT OUR CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
And so should you! Our report highlights our goals for the next five years and explains our global CSR mission...
READ MORE
WELCOME TO FRAME - JULY EDITION
Welcome to the July edition of Frame. It feels like the past 6 months have flown by so we wanted to pause and reflect on what has been, for many of us, a turbulent first half of the year.
We’re thrilled to say that with the support of our fantastic customers at the end of June we were 23% above budget. This has been driven by the significant growth experienced by most customers, an increasing number of dual sourcing customers moving all of their business to VEKA, and an acceleration of new quality customers committing to us.
Our lamination output has reached 6.1 million metres, year to date. We fully expect the next six months to be higher as we see the impacts of the creation of new capacity from various activities, including extensive recruitment capacity. This should help us maintain our leading position on colour and support up to 99% of all sales from our stocks made and stored in Burnley.
Our extrusion output was over 15,000 tonnes with an increased usage of recycled material from the new state of the art VEKA Recycling facility in Wellingborough. We are ready to increase output in the 2nd half of the year and, hopefully, see some reduction in supply chain events to help us meet that need. Whatever we have thrown at us we will find a way to deal with it and we will communicate with you openly. And remember when you work with VEKA we only extrude products for you to fabricate so we have no internal conflict on supply priorities.
In a year that we could never predict from one week to the next we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your custom, your support and, at times, your understanding as well work with the circumstances served up. We will continue to work to ensure you are in no doubt that we are an integral part of your own success and future ambitions.
JUST THE FACTS
Like many brands, we love being talked about! But have no time for fake news so let’s talk JUST THE FACTS…
FACT 1
So, to set the record straight, VEKA plc has not declared force majeure and if we were, we’d be straight, open and honest just as our German manufacturing site has been. Declaring force majeure protects both customers and suppliers with a view to long-term success for both.
FACT 2
In normal circumstances we would deliver OTIF performance of at least 98.5%; in the most extreme circumstances we are delivering 96.9%. without changing our lead times on ex-stock, restricting supply or pulling back Made To Order.
FACT 3
Well, a factual quote if you’ll permit us too:
‘It has been an extremely testing time for our industry. Exceptional sales have brought challenges for the supply chain and the future will continue to be uncertain for both during the remainder of 2021.
We are grateful that our suppliers on the whole have been able to ensure consistent supply of materials during such tricky circumstances & particularly grateful for our key supplier VEKA, who have been superb from the very first lockdown.
They have communicated pro-actively at every turn with openness & honesty. They have purchased wisely & have had an exceptional OTIF through careful planning & excellent management.
In an industry where strong relationships are harder to forge than ever before due to travel restrictions, automated systems & corporate lead organisations, it is extremely refreshing to see VEKA adapt, but still keep people at the forefront.’
Rhys Richings, Managing Director
SWC Trade Frames Ltd
The here, the now and the future
WE ARE CHALLENGED
As we are all aware demand in the UK market for windows and doors is well ahead of normal levels. Homeowners are “spending big” improving their homes and, combined with the impacts of COVID-19, Brexit, and supply challenges there are raw material challenges most weeks and price increases every month.
Part of VEKA’s response has been to significantly increase the number of profiles that include recycled content from VEKA Recycling and, at times, over 25% of our material used has been recycled content.
That is great for the environment and has also been a vital part of raw material availability. We have never seen times like these and, certainly when it comes to price and availability of raw materials, there is no immediate sign of this getting easier.
WE'RE THINKING ABOUT OUR FUTURE, AND YOURS
As always we are working on a long-term strategy to build an even better and bigger company through to 2025.
We’re focusing on you, our customers, and potential new customers. We’re taking stock of what we can do better, and how we can achieve the results that benefit you and your businesses.
One of our 2025 strategic objectives is to be 100% reliable, now we know we’re not 100%, but we will be. Our objectives aren’t written as nice pieces of managerial content, we hold ourselves accountable and we will strive to achieve 100% reliability for you.
Improving efficiencies and effectiveness in everything we do is something we can get to work on immediately, this comes in many forms, from our service offering, lead times, product offering to our efficiencies within our business that will improve efficiencies in yours.
As we look to the current market it would be great to think that these new levels of demand are here to stay though, as we head back to some degree of normality, people will find other things to spend their money on.
We cannot control how big the market is for windows, doors, or any of the other products we do now or in the future. What we can do is make sure we continue to be the best supplier in the market to keep you, our customers, happy, secure and thriving.
Our commitment to our customers has never been stronger, we’ve seen 2020 and the best part of 2021 test us in ways we couldn’t imagine but we have grown and learnt. Our long term strategy can’t account for every eventuality, after all no one can predict the future, but we’ve prepared for most. All our plans put you, the customer, first.
Have you seen our latest updates?
Be Our Guest...Virtually
We have introduced a Virtual Tour allowing you to view our factory, including the new Lamination building, from anywhere in the world, created to follow the flow of the process from compound to delivery, the virtual tour has been developed as many customers cited one of the highlights of meeting VEKA was seeing and believing the size of the operation.
We take you step by step from the start of our extrusion process to it being loaded onto our fleet for delivery. We highlight key facts and interesting points along the way to allow you to understand how our process truly works. This fantastic tool isn’t just for your Directors and Sales teams, why not show it to your employees and your customers after all, they’re part of our VEKA family!
Login to your account to view the full VEKA Factory Virtual Tour or watch our film version here
Access our Industry-Leading Software, WinDoPlan
In 2020 we launched our revolutionary new service WinDoPlan to our customers, changing the way they work and how they specify commercial projects this new tool proved a huge success. WinDoPlan will save you time and money, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, login to your account to access today.
‘As a company we are asked for specific section details which used to take up a considerable amount of time to procure, this was until the introduction of WinDoPlan!
The speed and efficiency of being able to log in, select a specific window style with the exact add on requirement for the project and download the head, jamb, or sill detail in various formats for PDF / DOC / DWG / PNG or IDXF reduces the time required and gives a more accurate interpretation of the clients requirements.
The benefit of being able to check the structural integrity of transoms & mullions without the need to send out information to the technical team at VEKA saves copious amounts of time and more importantly allows you to quickly ensure that you are compliant with your proposition.
WindDoPlan increases the efficiency of our business as well as increasing the professional feel of the documents we can now share with our clients.’
Blair Greig, Estimating Manager, Sidey
Have you read our Corporate Social Responsibility Report?
We’re pleased to launch our second corporate social responsibility report. Reflecting on the difficult year this report will be different to our 2020 report as we focus on where we are and where we want to be.
CSR is a central part of our company strategy for the next 5 years. It is very important to us that the way we work – and the strong sense of ethics we apply – will continue to be a key reason why our customers want to do business with us and why people choose to join our company and thrive in our family.
2020 was a turbulent year for many and as such we were unable to fully achieve all of the goals we set out in our 2020 CSR report. We remain committed and endeavour to get back on track by the end of 2021 and this year’s report highlights those 12 goals, which also reflect our new company mission: ‘We care about our partners, our people & our environment.
Click here to find out what our goals are and how they impact your business.
