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: Q4 2024
Economic conditions in the last quarter of 2024 appeared to remain flat, and there was little respite with the incoming new UK government. Housing reflected that with an unremarkable end to the year.
But starting 2025, the chancellor of the exchequer has been making increasingly positive noises about growth, specifically around speeding up planning approvals for the development of new homes. The government is backing housing developments in key areas such as zones close to commuter transport hubs, with a view to providing housing that targets working families. These ideas will be formally presented in the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill this spring.
Coming out of 2024, we can reflect on a difficult year which, on the surface, may not have delivered particularly positive market conditions. However, there were many progressive actions being taken in the housing industry regarding heating and cooling. Most, if not all, major housing developers are now actively planning for their heating systems of the future, and planning for The Future Homes Standard. Twenty twenty-four was the year when UK housebuilders started deep diving into what heating solutions they may couple with Air Source Heat Pumps in new build homes, with several housing developers now potentially reviewing adoption of product solutions within their house designs.
Fundamentally changing a heating system which has been commonplace since the 1970’s is a huge undertaking! It presents numerous challenges, but it also presents plentiful opportunities. At Polypipe, we are working in partnership with our customers to explore these improvements and efficiencies in the construction process as part of introducing innovative technologies.
We believe the only way a manufacturer of building products can guarantee long-term success for ourselves and for the wider delivery of sustainable homes, is to focus on value-added propositions for our customers rather than being labelled as just a product manufacturer. And to implement the necessary changes, the UK construction industry needs solutions to tomorrow’s problems. It is essential as a UK manufacturer that we are progressive in our innovations, to ensure we are providing customer solutions for the sustainable homes of the future.
To learn more about Polypipe’s Underfloor Heating offering, for example, visit www.polypipeufh.com