New year message

Dear Customers,

Happy January! What a year 2019 was! I thought 2018 was politically remarkable, but 2019 topped it by a country mile. The temptation to make caustic remarks about our politicians is irresistible, but in the spirit of a New Year I’m going to try to put all that nonsense behind me and move positively on.

The real surprise is that the economy has not bombed from the uncertainty – we certainly are a resilient nation. A few cracks have appeared, notably in construction where new project starts have slowed, but the galvanizing industry is about 1% up on last year and this must clearly reflect in fabrication too unless there’s been a move away from paint.

The December election outcome seemed to deliver a boost to share prices and Sterling and the optimist in me hopes that investors in construction projects will sound a huge collective sigh of relief and start pressing buttons in 2020. Oh, how we’ve all earned it. Apart from the stress caused by the politics, at Joseph Ash we’ve had two bouts of carrying extra zinc stocks to protect against potential problems at the ports in March and last October, soaking up large amounts of working capital for what turned out to be nothing.

I am pretty happy with Joseph Ash Group’s performance in 2019. We completed several important projects, notably a new roof in Sittingbourne and semi-automation of the production line at Hull and, more importantly, made much progress towards eliminating the risk of jigs being accidentally unhooked from cranes, a low-probability but high-impact hazard of our industry (and I guess many others). We have also strengthened our management team, especially in Safety, and largely stabilised our work forces following a wave of European workers losing confidence in the country in mid-late 2018.

About a year ago we set ourselves the target of becoming the absolute stand-out galvanizer for quality in the UK before the end of 2019, by tweaking our chemical and metallurgical formulae and strengthening our practises and procedures. I have been delighted by the results and I hope that you have noted the difference.

We undertook several interesting galvanizing projects in 2019 too, notably a project to rebuild a hurricane damaged school in Tortola, a new clubhouse for a garden community in Brent, a showcase of galvanizing and powder coating in a huge installation at Clerkenwell Design Week, and some beautiful sculptures for some amazing artists. The linked pictures illustrate some of that quality I am so proud of. We also continued to work hard on developing the skills of our people, eight of which gained qualifications at LMI 3 and 5 levels this year, and we were granted ‘Fit 4 Nuclear’ status (the first galvaniser in the UK to be accredited for the nuclear supply chain).

None of this progress is possible without the commitment of an excellent team and the support of you the customer. We are fortunate to have a very loyal base of customers that we are proud to consider partners and friends.

I wish you, your colleagues and your families a wonderful start to 2020 and happiness for this new decade!

Steven Hopkins, Managing Director