Demand in the fastener and fixings sector has continued to follow the general trends across merchants, with continuing soft demand driven by the sluggish levels of construction and Repair Maintenance & Improvement (RMI) activity. Supplies continue to be stable in terms of availability, with some downward pressure on pricing.

The sustainability agenda continues to gather momentum with increasing demands for information and declarations on the carbon content and sustainability of products. While sustainability is undoubtedly important, the approaches taken and requests made are often inconsistent and, in many cases, excessive for the category. The use of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD’s) is becoming more widespread in many of the larger categories, but for the fastener and fixings category, they are not necessarily the right way to deliver relevant information. Most fasteners and fixings are imported from the Far East, and quite often, to keep costs down, the same product may be sourced from multiple factories. This use of multiple sourcing adds enormously to the costs of preparing EPD’s, principally due to the need for independent verification, and makes it unrealistic for these to be expected in the category.

That is not to say the issue is being ignored; embedded carbon data is increasingly being collected, particularly for Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) needs, but these are not consistent with the full Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach taken in an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). The CBAM is a policy that puts a price on carbon emitted into the EU. The UK is introducing a UK CBAM by 2027. It seems likely that Fasteners and Fixings, where the products constitute a very small proportion of a building’s carbon content, will use a simplified methodology, probably using default values, which would not have any material impact on the overall carbon content of a building.