Heating and Ventilating

Gledhill Water Storage, the company that sold water storage units directly to major UK house builders, has gone into administration, but the chief executive says Gledhill Building Products is still going strong.
Gledhill Building Products supplies products and services directly to plumbers and builders' merchants, a fact that the firm says is helping it better weather the credit crunch storm.

Chief executive Mark Foster said: 'The rise in popularity of renewable systems, particularly solar powered, has driven the performance of Gledhill Building Products recently. The past 3 months in particular have been our most successful to date.'

Gledhill Building Products is one of the biggest cylinder suppliers in the UK, with 15 manufacturing depots supplying copper and stainless cylinders to plumbers and builders' merchants.

The commercial and domestic water storage manufacturer, Gledhill Water Storage, went into administration in October, after feeling the knock on effect of its major housebuilder customers being hit by the credit crunch.

'Gledhill Building Products hasn't been affected like Gledhill water storage has, because, unlike Gledhill Water Storage, it doesn't deal predominantly with new build' said a spokesman for Gledhill.

Mark Foster added: 'Unfortunately the downturn in the new build housing market left us with a much reduced order book for water storage products. Despite our very best efforts, we were unable to rescue the business and it was forced into administration.'

Gledhill employed around 275 people across the two businesses. The senior management team restructured the business and its anticipated 90 job losses were cut to 30 redundancies, following the firm's decision to absorb some staff into the Gledhill Building Products business.