profile
Ian Doherty is the Non-Executive Director of Hexstone and Owlett-Jaton, the UK and Ireland’s largest wholesaler of fasteners and fixings.
Following an extensive career in distributive businesses, Ian joined Owlett-Jaton in 2016. Ian brings a passion for customer service along with extensive hands-on experience in sales, marketing and supply chain operations.
In addition to his role at Owlett-Jaton, Ian was also the Chairman of the British and Irish Association of Fastener Distributors (BIAFD) and their representative to the European Federation of Distributor Associations (EFDA).
Owlett-Jaton
With a 30,000 SKU product range, Owlett-Jaton, the UK’s largest wholesaler of fasteners and fixings, supplies a comprehensive range of products to UK customers with next-day delivery. Established in 1947, Owlett-Jaton offers a complete wholesale solution to the builders’ merchant and distributor trade.
Among Owlett-Jaton’s well-known and trusted market-leading brands are the Unifix range of products, Vortex high-performance woodscrews, Thunderbolts and the extensive JCP range of specialist fixings. All products are backed up by technical support and endorsed by the company’s ISO 9001:2015 quality accreditation.
Owlett-Jaton is the only fastener and fixings wholesaler to have achieved the ISO 14001:2015 environmental accreditation and is continually striving to improve the sustainability of its operations and products.
Visit: www.owlett-jaton.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/owlett-jaton
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/jcp-construction-products
Launched in 2015, the award winning monthly Builders Merchant Building Index (BMBI) report is the only reliable measure of repair, maintenance & improvement (RMI) activity in the UK. Filling an important gap, it can be widely used in construction, and by economists, Government, national media, commentators and influencers outside the industry.
Owlett-Jaton Comment: Q2 2025
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.