profile
Matt Williams
Matt Williams is the Managing Director at Polypipe Building Products, joining the business in May 2023 from TradeKart Limited where he held the position of Operations Director. Prior to that, Matt held Operational Leadership roles at RWC and AkzoNobel, where he enjoyed great success in business transformation, process optimisation, and operational excellence.
Polypipe Building Products are part of the Sustainable Building Solutions Business Unit within Genuit, focusing on providing a range of solutions to reduce carbon content in the built environment.
Polypipe Building Products is the UK’s leading manufacturer of plastic piping systems and low-carbon heating solutions for the residential market. They design, develop, and manufacture over 20,000 product lines which are stocked in plumbers and builders’ merchants nationally.
Polypipe
Polypipe Building Products, part of Genuit Group, is one of Europe’s largest and most innovative manufacturers of plastic piping systems and low-carbon heating solutions for the residential market. At Polypipe Building Products, we specialise in products for domestic properties for both the new build and RMI markets with over 5,000 products to suit any installation in a range of aesthetics. Over our 40-year exitance, we have grown from a small plastic pipe manufacturer based in Doncaster, to a group of 17 businesses helping the UK construction industry build better and more sustainably.
As Genuit group, we consider ourselves thought leaders in the future sustainable built environment and we provide construction solutions way beyond plastic pipes and fittings, ranging from MVHR and SuDS systems to magnetic filters and anti-corrosion chemicals.
Our goal is to innovate and improve our products and services to help the UK reach net zero targets and to influence the market to drive towards future best practices and systems. With recent Part L building regulations updates, the steppingstone to the Future Homes Standard arriving in 2025, the heating of homes has suddenly become possibly the single biggest challenge facing UK housing developers and housing providers. The next few years will see the most fundamental change in heating domestic properties since gas boilers and steel radiators became commonplace during the late 1970’s and 80’s. Gas is being phased out as an energy source and heat pumps are being pushed by the government as a more sustainable electric heat source. This leads to opportunities for new and different heat emitters to be explored as heating solutions such as Underfloor Heating. This focus on decarbonisation is leading to a much higher level of insulation as standard in new build homes, which runs a very real risk of the challenge to heat homes quickly become a challenge to keep homes cool, particularly with record summer temperatures being regularly broken and expected to continue to get hotter. For this reason, heating and cooling must be considered in tandem in order to provide truly better homes for the future.
I am therefore joining the BMBI Experts panel to provide a specific focus on heating and cooling while we work together as an industry to provide solutions to this challenge. At Genuit we have ready-made complete solutions to heating and cooling of homes and we will continue to invest in renewable technologies to drive sustainable living.
Visit: www.polypipe.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/polypipe/
Twitter: @PolypipeTrade
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.
Polypipe Comment: Q2 2025
The UK house-building market has seen a distinct lack of growth or recovery. Recent trading updates from house builders and their supply chain partners confirm a flat market outlook. When markets are in this part of their cycle, there’s increased pressure on businesses to compete on volume while maintaining margins. This makes for a significantly more competitive commercial environment.
Innovation is the single most important focus for us at Polypipe, and it’s a culture we always promote across our range including underfloor heating for example, and cooling. Our homes and buildings generally weren’t designed and built for today’s climate, which is already warmer and wetter with more extremes expected in the future. Developing products that enable us to live comfortably in it is an important driver of innovation. Innovation however also becomes more critical during times of heightened competition, especially as the residential construction market moves toward a zero-carbon future.
For us, true innovation is about creating something genuinely new that delivers measurable value to the installer or homeowner, often by saving time. Our innovation is guided by a deep understanding of our customers’ needs, ensuring we solve real problems for them. We actively involve our customers in the process to guarantee we meet their needs and wants.
The motivations and behaviours of modern construction tradespeople have evolved. Younger generations have introduced new requirements and attitudes toward products and installation practices. Research suggests that speed, ease, availability and time are becoming the most important decision-making factors. Modern tradespeople want to be able to complete jobs quickly and easily and either move onto the next job or used saved time to enjoy a better work-life balance.
By innovating with and for these professionals, we believe we can deliver tangible savings in time, making UK construction more sustainable, higher quality, compliant with current and future legislation, and more efficient to install.
Find out more by clicking this link Housing | Building Products | Polypipe