In the last edition of GIB® News, I mentioned our focus for the balance of this calendar year would focus “on meeting today’s customers’ needs, with special attention to the quality and suitability of our products and systems, the provision of training and advisory services, and the execution of our delivery promises”.

The progress we have made with the specialty boards GIB Barrierline® and GIB Weatherline® has been very pleasing and, in spite of the challenges our Technical and Sales teams face operating at Level 3, their services have been well received.  At the same time, our Manufacturing teams have successfully improved the resilience position of our raw materials and, in concert with the Technical team, have made changes to increase capacity in the manufacture of plasterboard and compounds.

Over the past three decades, Winstone Wallboards has worked determinedly to meet its delivery promise of “order today, delivered tomorrow” and for the great majority of the time, we have successfully done that. As we expanded the DTS offer to include special labour, the timeframes for those services were, from time to time, extended and modified.  As we came out of the first lockdown in the middle of last year, the level of orders we received were far beyond what we had planned for, impacting on the delivery service our industry was used to.

However, nothing prepared us for the flood of activity that has occurred since the middle of August and which shows every sign of continuing into Calendar 2022.  Along with the rest of the industry, we are hitting record throughput levels, month after month. Thankfully our Contact Centre and Despatch teams have risen to the challenge and are doing an amazing job as we strive to meet our customers’ needs in these very testing times.

I would like to take the opportunity to update you on progress on the new facility at Tauriko. Despite the global supply chain challenges and travel restrictions associated with operating at the different Alert Levels, we are still on track to be fully operational around the middle of Calendar 2023. Interestingly, based on current forecast activity levels, our manufactured volume in the first full year is expected to be 20% ahead of what we predicted some 20 months ago.

Next year we will continue to work at making Winstone Wallboards a great place to work, strive to restore our delivery service levels, and advance the Tauriko project.

We very much appreciate the support that all participants of the industry continue to give us and very much look forward to working with you to create a better built environment for us all.

Finally we wish you all the very best for the “festive season and a Happy New Year”.