Timber garden furniture manufacturer Dandf has launched a new product range targeted at timber and builders merchants.
The company, bought out of receivership last year by for-mer John Carr and Palgrave Brown boss Richard Fawcett and business partner Paul Phillips, previously focused solely on the garden centre market.
“Garden centres will continue to be a major outlet, but we see a real opportunity for the merchant sector with the new range,” said Mr Fawcett. “The consumer trend towards using the garden as an outdoor living space is still increasing and, as the property market gets more difficult, as it is expected to do, builders will be looking to add extras onto properties. They’ve done the kitchens and the bathrooms, now we believe they will increasingly look to make the garden part of the package.”
The new range includes trellis, fencing posts, panels and garden buildings. It is mar-keted at a lower price point than the company’s other products, with the summer houses, for instance, replacing tongue and grooved walls and roofs and trenched trellis with overlapping boards and lighter trellising.
Sales and marketing director Steve Wain said that Dandf would advise merchant customers on marketing and set up a display for them.
“We also deliver and construct garden buildings for the end customer if required,” he said.
Since Mr Fawcett acquired Dandf, the company has in-creased its core workforce from 50 to 70 and doubled turn-over to £5m. “We expect to be in profit next year and eventu-ally to achieve sales of £12m out of our current premises.”
The 130,000ft2 Dandf plant at Ackworth near Doncaster has also seen major capital in-vestment in the past year. New equipment includes Weinig moulders and one its new thin-blade saws is about to be installed. This year Dandf also spent £150,000 on an on-site treatment facility, installed by Osmose to use its Naturewood preservative.
In July, Mr Fawcett and Mr Phillips also acquired the uPVC fence post specialist Polyfence and, while the businesses remain separate, the Polyfence range will now feature in the Dandf catalogue.
