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 Building Products Comment: Q3 2025
There has been no noticeable recovery in the UK housing market in the last quarter, however I remain optimistic for the future.
I see the Future Homes Standard (FHS) and the national drive for decarbonisation as the biggest growth opportunity our sector has ever faced. The UK’s housing stock is aging and inefficient—with the median Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) for housing in England and Wales sitting disappointingly at around Band D. To meet the goal of Net Zero by 2050 while delivering the 1.5 million new homes required, simply maintaining the status quo is a recipe for failure. The market demands radical innovation, and we must rise to meet it.
The key to success is forging deep, strategic partnerships with housing developers. The requirement for new homes to use low carbon heating systems from this year forces an industry-wide switch to heat pumps, underfloor heating and pre-insulated piping.
This isn’t just a component swap; it requires a wholesale redesign of a building’s operational core. Developers need partners such as ourselves who can co-engineer the transition. This means our R&D must align directly with the developer’s build strategy. We need to move beyond being simple suppliers to become integrated system designers. Our focus must be on creating advanced pipework and integrated systems that guarantee the optimal, low-temperature performance required by heat pumps, ensuring rapid, risk-free installation on-site.
Furthermore, true partnership means tackling the embodied carbon of construction materials. Developers face stringent new reporting requirements, and we must provide transparent data on the lifecycle of our products, utilising recycled content and low-carbon manufacturing to help them meet their whole-life carbon targets. By working together—manufacturer and developer—to deliver high-performance, low-carbon, and easily installed solutions, we not only comply with the new standards but outperform the market and secure a sustainable future for our industry.