Pipelife Ireland launches new commercial website

PIPELIFE IRELAND LAUNCHES NEW COMMERCIAL WEBSITE - WWW.PIPELIFEECO.IE

Pipelife is one of Ireland’s leading designers and suppliers of of Home Heating Solutions, supplying thousands each year. Drawing on 50 years of manufacturing experience from their production plant in Cork, Pipelife has been to the forefront in developing innovative products for many years. These include their Qual-PEX Eco Pipe and Pipelife Eco Underfloor Heating, engineered with energy conservation and waste water renewal in mind.

Compliance is becoming more and more prevalent within the industry. Pipelife wanted to offer a one stop shop website where Architects, Engineers, Consultant Engineers, BER Assessors, Contractors and Builders Merchants could have a knowledge base that contains all the relevant information, documentation and certification that is regularly requested. The purpose of the website is to give all parties a point of reference to learn about the different heating systems available and the necessary compliance documents that go with each product.

Padjoe Barry, National Sales Manager, commented “This is something that we have been working on for the last few months. In conjunction with the website launch we have also produced a detailed Engineers brochure pack which outlines the full range of stock that we provide and the relevant certificates and documentation that go with that. We hope that this will give those who require this information a simple one stop shop that they can refer to at any time and be confident that when they specify a product from Pipelife that it is certified to the highest standards”. In conjunction with the new website going live, Pipelife have also launched Continuous Personal Development (CPD) training for Architects, Engineers, Energy Assessors and similarly minded professionals. These certified courses are available in many technologies such as Underfloor Heating, Smart Controls and Heat Pumps and give the attendees an insight and knowledge of the principles of heating and system design and control considerations.

Padjoe continued, “These are certainly exciting times for Pipelife. While Covid has had an impact on many businesses including our own we have continued to invest and expand. We have recently opened our new Distribution Centre and Training Academy in Dublin which has proven to be very popular. We are also expanding our manufacturing process at our factory in Cork installing a new pipe production line to meet the demand for our Qual-Pex Plus+ ‘Easy-Lay’ pipe. We will also have some new faces joining the Pipelife team in the coming months as well as some new product lines that will be launched soon. All of this coupled with the launch of this new website really puts us in a strong position both for the rest of 2021 and also going into 2022!”

For more information and to talk to their team call 021 488 4700 or e-mail ireland@pipelife.com and check out their website www.pipelifeeco.ie.

POSITIVE OUTLOOK FOR CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY IN SHORT TERM BUT CAUTION URGED IN LONG TERM BY ECONOMIST AT OCTABUILD WEBINAR

A few weeks before the recent Budget, leading economist, academic and media commentator, Colm McCarthy, predicted that consumer spending on private residences would auger well for the building/construction industry in the short term. In addition, he said ambitious targets in the Housing for All plan announced prior to the Budget would suggest a positive short and medium-term future for the sector and its suppliers. The Budget subsequently included ¤202m for 22,000 home energy upgrades. Colm McCarthy was speaking at a webinar organised by Octabuild on 21st September. The webinar was introduced by Octabuild chairperson Ray Molyneaux of Irish Cement on behalf of the other Octabuild companies: Dulux Paints Ireland, Etex Ireland, Glennon Brothers, Gyproc, Instantor, Kingspan Insulation and Wavin Ireland. Budget 2022 has been described as a ‘one for everyone in the audience’ event but even before it was delivered McCarthy warned that this would be the last ‘soft’ budget for some time. “Unless there is a sustained take-off in economic growth, the budget position could quickly become difficult. Permanent spending, as well as emergency spending, has risen sharply. Permanent revenue has not,” he said. In terms of the National Development Plan (NDP), which was due to be published shortly after the Octabuild webinar took place, McCarthy warned that based on previous experience of NDPs, its long-term benefit might not transpire. “It would be prudent for the construction industry to discount over-ambitious targets in the next version of the NDP as they could be sacrificed from 2023 or 2024 onwards,” he said. He continued, “Construction is greatly assisted by a stable capital programme and if there is a retrenchment in budget policy, on past form the capital budget will suffer. Far from acting to stabilise economic activity as the textbooks recommend, the public capital programme has been an independent source of macro-economic instability in Ireland. The stop-start pattern delivers poor value – bad projects already commenced get completed and better ones get cancelled or deferred. There have been three over-shoot debacles recently, the national broadband plan, the maternity hospital and the children’s hospital. The new NDP will be ambitious, and the ambitions may not be realistic. When the public finances get into trouble, Irish governments follow tradition. They slash the capital programme,” said McCarthy. He believed that this time the ‘nice to have’ projects may be deferred. “The housing budget will get precedence and local authorities will be funded to increase output for housing for rent and given money, for a while, to improve services. Perhaps Irish Water will also get a decent capital budget. Whatever has to be done to bring about climate transition, there is a big bill coming in the energy sector. Those things are priority,” he said. It subsequently emerged in the NDP that Irish Water is projected to invest in the region of ¤6 billion in our water services infrastructure over the period 2021-2030 with ¤4.5 billion in relation to investment in domestic water services, which supports future housing delivery. On the question of a shortage of labour in the construction industry, Colm McCarthy said that labour supply shortages in Ireland could prove to be temporary. He believes that in the longer term there could be a reflow of people from other countries in part as the UK is not as accessible. “In the bubble period of 2003-2008 inflows of workers to Ireland was higher than to the UK,” he said. Colm also said that there are numerous other uncertainties – especially the stance of Eurozone monetary policy and the path of borrowing costs. ECB support for sovereign bond markets will be run down in time and European Commission limits for debt and deficits will be re-invoked from 2023. Overall Colm McCarthy provided a very interesting analysis of the current and future economic landscape. Largely positive in the short and medium term as private deposit balances have risen sharply and will support spending and as the state capital budget is also expanding. At the same time Colm was urging caution in the longer term in the event of a retrenchment in budget policy.