FORT Fencing
Agricultural & Equine Fencing
FORT March Newsletter - 2023
04 March 2023
2023 is now well on the way and we are starting to see longer days and a hint of warmer weather, which brings out a smile for every builder, after a cold, dark, wet and windy winter!
February remained busy and while there’s no doubt that the overall construction sector is quieter than a year ago, our part of the market seems to be surprisingly buoyant. Large scale new build developments have certainly slowed down, considerably, but housing association numbers are strong and then the small (1-5) developments are also carrying on well.
Repair, maintenance, improvement and landscaping as a whole remains robust. That means we’re seeing good improvement in availability of many building products, as manufacturers have lost those top end volumes and it’s allowing FORT to provide really strong service levels across almost all areas.
Within FORT things continue to develop; we’ve refreshed the livery on our trucks, continued to make progress on our showroom development and have added several new product lines to our portfolio (more on that later).
We were all delighted to see Spring Note win in dramatic fashion at Newbury a couple of weeks ago, making it two wins and two runner-up places in her four races this year. We’re not saying that FORT’s involvement has made the difference, but needless to say she never won a race before we were involved…
Finally, it was with mixed emotions that we said a fond farewell (for now?!) to Pat Kiely who retired last week after a long and successful career. You can read the full story here, but everyone at FORT wants to extend a heartfelt thank you to Pat, and best of luck in his retirement.
General Availability & Price Update
We always give a report on indexes that help to forecast where the market is going. While many commodities have fallen in price, the rate of inflation is bound to impact, especially on labour costs. We therefore feel that it’s as important as ever for our customers to be cautious around holding prices firm for too far into the future.
Currency: The £ has fallen 2.5% in the last month and 10% in the last year against the US$. This impacts heavily on freight, oil and many other items, but at least we’re well up on October 2022.
Containers: We’ve been reporting huge falls in container rate prices for many months and while it has slipped again this month, the bottom looks to have been reached. This has helped to lower many material cost prices, especially for heavy/bulky items such as sandstone. We’re unlikely to see much of a change.
Steel: From a high of around $975/tonne, rebar fell to about $630/tonne, but as the chart shows this has now started to climb again and is currently around $760/tonne. High energy costs and general demand will impact; the horrendous earthquakes in Turkey will create a surge in demand as well.
Timber: After a small surge in January, US timber prices have fallen back again, to around the ‘normal’ levels prior to the pandemic. US housebuilding demand is being knocked by higher interest rates. We are seeing European prices rising again in March. This seems to show that historical high stock levels have been used up and sawmills are getting badly needed increases, to cover their far higher costs.
Inflation:This chart remains as the most scary one of them all. Despite higher interest rates and all manner of other factors, inflation is not calming down very quickly. It has certainly dropped, but only by a small amount. This impacts on so many things and generally means we’re all making do with less disposable income. That must have an impact on demand.
FORT continues to improve its core range of products held in stock and we’ve recently added some very useful new items, including:
As always, please do not assume stock availability - check with the sales office!
Our reputation relies on word of mouth and testimonials from our valued customers, and as such we'd love for you to share reviews of your experiences with us on either Google, Facebook or TrustPilot if you have the time.
Thank you very much for your ongoing support of FORT!
Best regards,
Matt, Tim & Keith
The Directors