NEWS

Quarter 3 & 4 of 2023 Fred Lindop Trophy Winners

We set up The Fred Lindop MBE Trophy in 2023 to reward staff members who have displayed one or all of the values which were most important to Fred: Respect, Integrity, Encouragement, Knowledge & Self-Development.

Everyone in the company can nominate one colleague each quarter, with the winner being picked from all the nominees by a select panel. Our winners for the first 2 quarters of 2023 were Jordan Payne and Gary Holmes and now we can announce the winners for the 3rd and 4th quarters, who are Danny Webb and Ann Cumiskey!

Danny was nominated by 3 colleagues in particular for his leadership, dedication and outstanding performance during his manager's paternity leave.

Ann’s willingness to help others and the positive impact she has on the wider team was the reason for her being picked as our latest winner.

Danny and Ann have both received £200 gift vouchers and breakfasts for them and the other members of their respective teams, as well as of course having the honour to hold onto the illustrious trophy itself for 3 months!

Many congratulations to all our winners in 2023 and we look forward to informing you of our next winners of this great award in 2024!

NBP Staff End The Year With A Bang

Before we shut down for the holidays in December, the NBP teams at all 4 of our depots let their hair down and went on nights out to celebrate the end of another challenging, but rewarding year in the life of our company.

Each depot did their own thing, from having a sit down meal to a few games of bowling, but the common denominator was everyone drank, ate and was merry!

Fred Lindop Trophy Winners

Early in 2023, our very own Fred Lindop MBE sadly passed away at the age of 84. So to honour his memory, NBP set up The Fred Lindop MBE Trophy, which is awarded on a quarterly basis to a staff member who has been nominated by colleagues for exhibiting one or all of the values Fred proudly upheld: Respect, Integrity, Encouragement, Knowledge & Self-development.

Our inaugural winners for the first 2 quarters of this year are Jordan Payne and Gary Holmes! Both Jordan and Gary were awarded with the trophy, which they then kept for three months, while they also received a £200 gift voucher and a breakfast for all the members of their team.

Jordan was nominated for the award for his hard work deputising as the Depot Manager at Hinckley and the fact he always has such a positive attitude and eagerness to help others. While those who nominated Gary said he always goes the extra mile, not only with our customers, but with his colleagues too.

A huge well done to the winners we have had so far and hopefully this prestigious trophy will continue to be awarded to deserving staff members for years and years to come!

Recent Construction Site Images

Over the last few weeks, several of our reps have been out to see the progress of sites we have supplied materials for and taken some great images of our products in situ while they were at it.

For this recent project undertaken by a customer out of our Hinckley depot, they have used plasterboard, white Swish square fascia and soffit, black, round FloPlast guttering, Tapco slate tiles in Pewter Grey and Hardie Plank Cedar cladding in Sail Cloth which we supplied to create a fantastic, large warm roof extension.

One customer was delighted with the huge stocks and availability of products immediately available at our Hinckley super depot, as they said: “I can’t fault the service, I call up and it's with me the next day at a great price!”

If you have any images of projects you have undertaken using materials purchased at NBP that you’d be happy for us to share on social media, please send them to marketing@nbp.co.uk

June 2023 Press release - NBP expands its range of cladding

Northern Building Plastics, one of the UK’s largest suppliers of materials for the trade, is helping customers take advantage of the increase in cladding demand with new products and colours.

According to figures from the Rated People Home Improvement Report, cladding has become the biggest home improvement trend amongst homeowners, seeing a rise of more than 700 percent over the past year.

Due to this demand, NBP has recently expanded its cladding collection, with new colours and products to help its customers make the most of the current market.

Stephen Jones, Sales Director at Northern Building Plastics says: “We’ve definitely seen a huge increase in the demand for cladding recently, which is why we’ve added to our already impressive range.”

“We’ve always held a selection of cladding ranges from the biggest brands, such as HardiePlank and Fortex, because we want to offer our customers more choice. However, we wanted to take this to the next level with new products and colours.”

“We’ve added Anthracite Grey to help our customers match their cladding to their window and door installations, taking advantage of the huge demand for this popular shade. We’ve also added Fortex Shadow Gap cladding to our collection, which is a stylish new product which offers an embossed finish.”

“All of these new products are great additions to our already impressive cladding range and give our customers more choice and more opportunities to thrive in the current market. Cladding provides a fantastic upsell opportunity for window installers and general builders, so we’re excited for the opportunities which our customers can gain from these new products.”

“All of these new additions are backed up by our industry-leading delivery service which helps make the lives of our customers much easier, as all of our products are available with free next-day delivery and no minimum order. This means you can get everything you need, expertly delivered, with no disruption on-site.”

R.I.P. Fred Lindop 1938 - 2023

One of Rugby’s greatest referees and a cornerstone of the NBP family, Fred Lindop has sadly passed away.

Born in Wakefield in 1938, he refereed in both rugby league and rugby union.

He took charge of 22 test matches including the 1970 World Cup Final, as well as five Challenge Cup Finals.

In 1989 he was awarded an MBE for his services to the sport and in 2009 was inducted in the Rugby Football League’s Roll of Honour.

In 2010, Fred joined NBP to help support his son and co-founder, Richard Lindop. Besides helping to pass his wealth of knowledge and life experience to all the new starters, he was always available, willing to try his hand in whatever capacity he could.

Like clockwork, Fred was always one of the first to arrive, immediately answering the phones, going to the bank, making a sandwich run, or jumping in and making emergency deliveries for customers stuck for an item to finish a project – the list of his efforts goes on and on.

The greater the man, the larger the hole they leave behind. And although Fred’s sudden departure has left a huge void in this world, his place in NBP folklore will live long in our memories. Gone, but never forgotten!

New NBP Website is Live!

We have been working on our new website for quite some time and now it’s live! Designed to support trade customers across all sectors in the construction industry, it offers many bespoke features to help you and your business.

You can now create ‘project lists’ to assist when pricing up future projects. There is an account management area where you can review your orders, quotes, invoices, and statements, as well as organise returns at the click of a button.

There are plenty of features designed to speed up your time on the site, such as the ‘quick order’ function and ‘repeat order’ option, helping to make your life easier. Not only that, but you can order up to 10:00pm at night and we will still deliver to site the very next working day!

Why not have a look at the new and let us know what you think. And by the way, did we mention we have added plenty of new products, so now there is even more choice from your favourite supplier.

James Hardie Promotion Winners

Thanks to everyone who entered our amazing prize giveaway 😍. Congratulations to the three winners 👍of The Big Win with NBP and James Hardie #NBPBigWin 🏚️#1stPRIZE #£1kholidayvoucher @centerparcs ✈️#2ndPRIZE #TVaudiobundle 📺 #3rdPRIZE #ElectricScooter 🛴

NBP shows its support for the Children in Need DIY SOS Big Build 2022

Northern Building Plastics donated products for the BBC’s Children in Need DIY SOS Big Build Special supporting Leeds charity Getaway Girls. The charity helps empower young women and girls to lead safe, healthy and fulfilled lives, by improving mental health, building confidence and self-esteem.

The opportunity for NBP to give back to its community was one they just couldn’t turn down.

Local tradespeople and suppliers were asked to donate their time and products to help on the project and NBP donated underground drainage, soffits, fascias and rainwater goods to help get it over the line in just 13 days. Getaway Girls charity now have a space that provides new offices, a creche, a music studio, counseling rooms, activity spaces plus a new garden.

Judah Wilson, CEO at Northern Building Plastics, says: “With our head office being in Leeds, it was fantastic to be able to help out a local charity like Getaway Girls. We’ve also donated a lot as a company to Children in Need this year.

“The work that the DIY SOS team do is incredible and it’s amazing to see another example of how they are helping the local community. This project will transform the lives of so many young girls and women around Leeds and it was a no brainer for us to contribute.”

Speaking on the final day of the build, CEO Flavian Docherty, praised the local companies for their generosity on this project.

“It’s fantastic (people) giving up their time for free, especially at the moment, obviously people are struggling, and I think it’s amazing they’re doing this. They don’t know Getaway Girls. We just want to say thank you.”

Presenter of the popular show, Nick Knowles, also echoed Flavian’s statement and spoke highly of the companies and people who donated.

“It's a health check for the community. How is your community? Will people come out and help if they get the opportunity? The answer is yes. Wherever we go in the country, that's true. And then for the audience, it can be really reassuring to know that there are a lot of good people in our society who do want to help.”

For more information and to donate to the Getaway Girls charity, visit www.getawaygirls.co.uk

Why not watch this fantastic Children In Need special unfold on catch-up with the BBC iPlayer... https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001f8h6/diy-sos-the-big-build-for-children-in-need

Equal opportunities for women at Northern Building Plastics

The construction industry generally has struggled to attract more women into jobs, and in a bold move, Northern Building Plastics has challenged this premise with impressive results. In the last 18 months, the number of women working throughout Northern Building Plastics depots and its Leeds-based HQ has increased.

Zoe King, HR Manager at Northern Building Plastics, explains how they achieved the change: “We believe the jobs we have are not ‘male or female’, but traditionally the roles had been predominantly filled by men and it was men that were applying for the positions.

“As we were not getting interest from women for jobs at our depots, we looked at the beginning of the recruitment process. We analysed the words we were using and could see that they were biased towards men. That is why we focused on changing the way we worded our recruitment adverts and social posts to make them less exclusive.

“It’s certainly worked. When we changed to more neutral wording, we saw a significant increase in the number of women applying for positions.

“It gave us a bigger pool of people to choose from and the high quality of the female candidates has meant we have taken on more women in the last 18 months for jobs in the sales office, warehouse and as a driver at the Hinckley Depot.”

Zoe adds: “Being part of the construction industry, we know that there is a much bigger discussion about getting more women to fill not just support roles, but hands-on positions and trades. We have proven that making changes brings positive results and we are immensely proud to see the increase in numbers of women applying for positions throughout Northern Building Plastics.”

NBP Depots play hard to raise money for Macmillan

Four 5-a-side football teams came together on Saturday 7 May at Powerleague Bolton for the inaugural Northern Building Plastics charity football tournament.

The charity chosen for the event was Macmillan Cancer Support and on the day £312 was collected, which NBP matched, to make a total donation of £624.

The teams were made up of men and women working from each of the Northern Building Plastics Depots plus one fielded from Leeds HQ. The kick-off was at 1pm and during the afternoon’s mini-league, a series of 4 matches were played, culminating in an exciting final between Leeds and Hinckley, with an 8-8 draw decided by a penalty shootout. It was Leeds that took the trophy with a final tally of 7–6. Although runners-up, the Hinckley team saw their player Lewis Shaw pick up the Golden Boot award with an impressive 15 goals during the tournament.

It remains to be seen whether Leeds will successfully defend their title in 2023, especially as there will be more teams involved due to the depot expansion programme. However, the trophy is theirs for 2022!

Steve Jones, Director at Northern Building Plastics, says: “The inaugural tournament was a great success and the organisation of the event by the Bolton Depot was superb. It was a good opportunity to get all the depots together outside of work – and raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support made it even more worthwhile.”

Stephen Jones, Sales Director for Northern Building Plastics, talks about the unprecedented demands on tradespeople and how NBP is helping customers save time.

Saving time

Figures from the excellent Rated People Home Improvement Trends Report 2022 show us what many of us suspected which is that we are living through unprecedented times for home improvement companies, and that the demands for services from the public have never been higher.

In 2021, nearly half of all UK residents made improvements to their homes, and the demand for tradespeople increased by 32 percent.

According to the report, 2022 is unlikely to see a significant slowdown. Much of it is about adding more square footage or making the original space more multifunctional. We can see this was a direct response to the changes people encountered after spending more time in the house, especially the pressures of home-working and home-schooling.

Dissatisfaction with the homes that people already live in is the normal driver for moving house. However, there’s been a severe lack of property coming onto the market, which meant that there’s more pressure to ‘improve not move!’

The report also highlighted the trend for more eco-upgrades and showed that more than half of those questioned were looking for savings from eco-purchases including solar, heat pumps and higher energy rated windows and doors. With energy bills continuing to rise, it’s likely that this figure will go up even further.

Interestingly, the report also stated that last year 61 percent of respondents had adapted their work to be more environmentally friendly. Not just in offering more eco-products and services, but also in the way they operate.

That’s true for us too. We can see customers are squeezed for time with the high demand for their work. Changes in jobs can happen right up to the last minute, and Covid has made it worse. If someone in a household has tested positive, the job has to be moved and another put in its place. This means that customers sometimes need fast turnaround times on products.

So we have a range of services that save time for customers.

We offer next day delivery on products ordered on the website up to 10pm. To make this happen, we pick orders overnight, so the delivery vehicles are loaded up and ready for an early start. We also have a large fleet of vehicles which means more orders are delivered early in the morning when our customers need them.

Of course, if we are picking overnight, then the stock has to be available straight away. We have chosen a very different model to our competitors by having supersized depots. We have a huge product range, but we also have large stocks of individual items because we know that it’s the best way to serve customers. Out of stock items cause tradespeople massive time issues, especially if they have to run around trying to source it from multiple trade counters or locations.

For commercial customers, the large stock holdings work perfectly too. We offer on site advice and can issue schedules within 48 hours. We have an automated call off order system that’s super responsive so we can deal with any last minute alterations, should they crop up.

What we have seen is that because of the reliability of our next day delivery service, less customers now visit the trade counter. They simply order what they want and it turns up when they want it.

We know that the combination of a wide product range, high stock levels, and next day delivery on 98 percent of orders, saves time for customers and they get more productive time on site.

From our three depots in Leeds, Bolton and Hinckley and a new one opening soon in the North East, we can offer our super service to more businesses. At Northern Building Plastics we respect our customers’ time, after all, as they say, time is money.

New Depot In The North East – Coming Soon

Sales Director Steve Jones keeps us in the loop with the latest expansion plans:

Expansion is on the cards again at Northern Building Plastics as another Depot is soon to be opened in the North East.

The Depot is well on its way to being ready and we are already delivering into the area. Again, we are opening a super-sized depot to hold £1 million of stock. The new building is 28,000 sq ft and the racking is going in to store our huge stockholding so we can offer next day delivery on 1,000s of products for customers. In our range of maintenance free building plastics we include roofline, drainage, composite decking, cladding, insulation, sealants and much more. For more details of the complete range, you can download the product guide here: https://www.nbp.co.uk/pg

We have chosen the new site in Birtley so we can offer our exceptional service to more customers in the North East. As the depot is literally just off the A1(M) it gives excellent transport links to Durham, Middlesbrough, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Stockton-on-Tees, Newcastle upon Tyne, Carlisle, Sunderland and up to the Scottish borders.

We will also be creating up to 40 new jobs in the area. Check out the careers page for more information of vacancies today... http://www.nbp.co.uk/careers

Facebook Competition Winner Presented With Prize

To celebrate the opening of our new Hinckley depot, we ran a competition on our Facebook page, giving our followers the chance to win a Makita site radio.

After receiving dozens of entries, it was Russell Cabble who was drawn out of the hat as the lucky winner of the radio, which I'm sure he'll enjoy while working out on site for many years to come!

We are excited to announce that we are opening our new depot in Hinckley on Monday 6^th December 2021.

Our third supercentre situated at the Tungsten Park Lime Kilns in Hinckley, is a prime logistics location just two miles from Junction 1 of the M69.

Why not visit our fully stocked Hinckley depot, with a vast array of quality, low-maintenance building materials, free freshly ground coffee while you collect your products at our trade counter, and our very experienced and friendly team, who will be happy to assist you with all your construction requirements.

Situated on the A5, it provides a strategic link to Junction 10 of the M42 (Tamworth) and Junction 18 of the M1 (DIRFT/Crick). The imposing 31,000 sq ft building is fitted with new offices, trade counter and a fully stocked warehouse to provide a vast array of premium building materials including fascia, soffit, and rainwater, in all sizes, popular colours and styles.

Hinckley is perfectly situated to provide a free next day, high-class delivery service to the trade across the West Midlands region including Walsall, the East Midlands, the whole of Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Coventry, as well over to Peterborough and Milton Keynes.

NBP Expands Into Midlands With New Hinckley Depot

Midlands installation companies will soon have 1,000s of products from the biggest brands in building plastics available for next day delivery, as NBP opens the doors to its Hinckley Depot in November.

BP has been delivering low-maintenance building products to the trade since 2010, and currently has branches in Leeds and Bolton, covering the North of England. The new Hinckley depot means customers in the Midlands will now have the same easy access to this extensive range of maintenance-free building plastics, which includes roofline, drainage, composite decking, cladding, insulation, sealants and much more.

To get the depot ready for opening, the initial 27,000 sq ft space has already been expanded to 30,710 sq ft with the addition of a new mezzanine floor, maximising capacity for stocks to get 1000s of products on the shelves, so they are available for next day delivery or same day collection.

“Following the success of our Leeds and Bolton depots, we are expanding our network across the UK and Hinckley is a fantastic location to serve the Midlands,” says Stephen Jones, Sales Director at NBP.

“Customers tell us they like buying from us because of our huge range of products and high stock levels, and the new 30,000 sq ft Hinckley depot means we can offer this incredible level of building plastics products to companies in the Midlands."

“Hinckley’s excellent transport links will provide us with easy access to the Midlands, which means we can offer our next day delivery service on 1,000s of products.”

The expansion comes as part of NBP’s plan to offer more coverage across the UK. The depot, located at Lime Kiln Business Park will create more than 40 new jobs in the area including drivers, warehousing and sales roles.

Leeds and Bolton Depots Set To Host Macmillan Coffee Morning

This coming Friday (24th September) NBP will be hosting coffee mornings at both the Leeds and Bolton depots in order to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support.

As well as teas and coffees, there will be plenty of delicious cakes available to treat yourself to, along with some fun competitions to get involved in!

Every penny raised on the day will very generously be matched by Richard, Judah and the rest of the company directors, so hopefully this will be a great chance to generate plenty of money that will go to a great cause.

It'd be great to see as many people there as possible to make this event a success, so if you're nearby either branch, do pop in!