We are really proud to be a UK-based manufacturer and it remains a source of competitive advantage for us in several ways.

We manufacture all the cabinets for our kitchen ranges (almost 5 million a year) and some of the other kitchen and joinery products we sell, which is the source of competitive advantage for us in several ways. We keep under review what we believe is best to make or best to buy, balancing cost and overall supply chain availability, resilience, and flexibility.

We are continuing to invest in both capability and capacity to drive productivity and to support future growth. Our Runcorn factory with its high-volume, low-cost panel making capability has always been an integral part of our manufacturing and logistics strategy. In line with our growth and investment ambitions for the business, we are in discussions with all interested parties to redevelop the site to increase capacity and broaden its capabilities.

We have also invested in new furniture lines at our Howden site, which are amongst the most advanced of their type in Europe, with a full year capacity of around 2 million pieces. These give us the ability to make a variety of kitchen and bedroom furniture, principally frontals and panels, but also skirting and architraves, for more of our ranges at the same quality as we can source externally, but at a lower cost and at a reduced lead time to delivery. We have also invested in two lines to facilitate our Paint to Order initiative. Located in a purpose-built facility near our Howden site, the lines give us an industry-leading production capability.

We protect stock availability in several ways, which helps us deal with supply chain disruption and maintain our service levels. We have improved stock replenishment by supplementing our depots’ core weekly deliveries with investment in a next day service via a network of cross docking centres (or “XDCs”).

XDCs are a key enabler to delivering the levels of high service and availability which differentiate our offer and enable depots to hold deeper stocks of faster selling lines, making it simpler and more efficient for depots to provide superior service levels and availability.