INDUSTRY FOCUS: MANUFACTURING

sustainability of any organisation and, in turn, build a better planet for everyone.

“Using our insight and specialist know-how, we are supporting our customers and manufacturers to make tangible steps towards a greener future.” Jones and Chilvers jointly bring a vast amount of experience in their respective sectors, we learn, crucial to SIG Building Solutions’ ability to bring this offering to market. “Guy joining our team last year is what has made the difference for us,” Jones opines. “Of course, we have always had the manufacturing capability, but Guy has brought the experience and industry knowledge - and contacts - to enable us to bring this offering to market.

“My background is in traditional construction, I have worked in and around the industry for 25 years; Guy, supported by our trusted supply partners and design team, are the ones who bring the experience in this particular sector.”

Maximising routes to market is high on the agenda for SIG Building Solutions at the current moment, Jones explains, and finding ways to link in with the SIG businesses throughout Europe, which is partially exciting when it comes to solar. “You only have to look at France, for example, where a new ruling stipulates that all car parks must henceforth have these canopies,” Chilvers informs, “and I have already priced up hundreds of thousands of car parking spaces for big automotive groups.

“Through SIG we already have subsidiaries in France, as well as in the likes of Poland and Germany, and our cold-rolled steel sections lend themselves well to being manufactured here in the UK and despatched throughout Europe. Currently there are companies in Spain and Denmark sending canopies to the UK; there is no reason why we cannot expand into Europe.”

Solar car parks are going to be one of the main drivers for SIG Building Solutions moving forward, Jones opines, with the move to electric mobility necessitating infrastructure for EV chargers around the world to keep customers and employees on the move. “Generally, when putting up these canopies, clients are thinking in terms of EV charge points underneath them,” she details. “That entails digging up the carpark, putting trenches and plinths, and then adding barriers.

“What we have done is to integrate what we call an EVB,” Jones resolves. “With this solution a steel beam runs across the underside of the canopy, onto which the EV charge point is mounted, and then all the cabling is housed within the canopy. The initial feedback that we have had has been resoundingly positive, and this is something that nobody else has ever offered.

“Utilising the new customerfacing SIG Building Solutions brand has opened up so many new sectors for us,” adds Jones. “It has allowed us to take a really credible offer to market in a way that we never could before, and facilitates our being able to operate in ways that would until now have been beyond us.

“Nothing embodies that more than the solar structures package solution, which brings together all of the elements in which we have excelled for so many years, and presents it in a fresh way to a new market.”