Hold onto your hats, here we go again!

We hadn’t even learned what horrors the Chancellor’s budget would contain when the CPA (Construction Products Association) launched its dollop of pessimism into the market with its Autumn Forecasts, downgrading its previous projections for construction in 2026.

The reality of the third quarter failing to provide the usual Autumn lift has finally knocked the wind out of any aspirations for 2025 to recover the sort of growth that most of us had hoped we would see. This time last year, like others in the industry, we were setting our sales budgets with reasonable expectation that by now the markets would be on a steady positive trend line.

Certainly, for those producers in the heavy side category there is little comfort when viewing like for like sales volumes in the third quarter. Be it RMI or new build, the consumer needs confidence to borrow and spend. This is simply not happening at the levels required to kick start the market back to growth.

On a positive note, Brett Martin grew in the period beyond our like for like sales through the launch of new systems and success in extending our independent merchant network based on a positive response to our customer service. While the market performance may be disappointing, it is a great encouragement for our company to have received supplier of the year awards, reflecting the value of a process of continual improvement.

Herein lies the challenge for our industry: to remain focused on customers’ needs which continue to change in line with regulations and service expectations. As we closed the third quarter, we broke ground on a major new service centre at our Derbyshire hub. It will enable us to deliver enhanced service for customers through efficiency in our operations.

The economy is beyond our control but, as a private business, we plan for the future in the knowledge that this has been a successful strategy throughout our 70 odd years in the industry.