Recently, TSJ had an opportunity to visit Palace Chemicals’ headquarters in Speke, Liverpool, receiving a tour around its recently opened Skills Hub training facility as well as the company’s manufacturing operations.
Skills Hub
Located directly across the road from the company’s headquarters, the Skills Hub has been created as a practical training centre where tilers, merchants, distributors, retailers and other industry professionals can develop their understanding of modern installation methods.
“We’ve said all along we want to create best practice,” says Steve Ball, commercial and marketing director at Palace Chemicals, “to ensure that the community – whether it be tilers, retailers, distributors – has understanding not only of the current British Standards, but how they might change because of new technologies in backgrounds as well as tiles and adhesives.”
One core principle the company emphasises about Skills Hub is that the training is practical first and supported with theory. “The feedback we’ve had from the courses so far is that they’re much more hands-on than many people expected. That’s exactly what we wanted, because that’s how people actually learn on-site.”
This focus on hands-on learning is a direct response to feedback from real tilers who attended the company’s initial events. Taking that feedback on board, Palace adapted the format, reducing presentation-heavy elements and increasing opportunities for attendees to work directly with products and systems.
To accomplish this in a more holistic (and therefore useful) way, Palace is collaborating with tool manufacturers and other firms within the trade to offer courses that go beyond its own particular expertise. “What we’re trying to do is partner up with other manufacturers,” Steve explains. “So we’re planning a course on working with expansion joints and decoupling mats, and the aim is to bring in a specialist in those products to help deliver the course.”
Alongside a set of planned core courses for tilers, the company will also offer bespoke courses for its retail customers’ staff on their products as well. “That’s a key part,” Steve says. “It will be staff training as well as awareness and really driving those products into the market.”
Steve believes this audience has become increasingly important as many retail and trade businesses experience high levels of employee turnover. “With some of our larger retail customers, there seems to be quite a churn of staff, and because of that, there’s less established knowledge within those businesses,” Steve explains.
This of course has a knock-on effect, he says, as when staff don’t know much about a product, they will shy away from talking about it and struggle to sell it. Conversely, given some training and knowledge about that product, the same staff will have a much easier time presenting it to customers in an assured, convincing way.
The Skills Hub therefore serves a dual purpose. It provides technical education while also strengthening relationships across Palace’s distribution network. Large customers have already expressed interest in using the facility as part of their own staff development programmes.
More than meets the eye
The Skills Hub initiative forms part of a broader repositioning effort for Palace Chemicals as the company prepares for its 50th anniversary in 2028. Speaking with multiple members of the upper management team, including joint managing director Dan Stevenson and manufacturing operations director Jon Blake, a common theme was that Palace is a much bigger company than many in the industry realise. That’s a perception the company would like to correct.
For example, across its 300,000sq ft manufacturing facility the company produces a wide range of Palace-branded products as well as several other brand ranges. “It’s quite important to say that the scale of our manufacturing capabilities isn’t appreciated just from the Palace brand itself”, says Steve, “We’ve always been a very flexible manufacturer and due to the sheer volume of product we produce, we believe we are the largest independent manufacturer in our industry.”
”Visiting Skills Hub gives our customers, their teams and their customers an appreciation of that as well as learning some really useful skills.”
That flexibility remains one of the company’s defining characteristics. Palace has invested in systems that allow production to switch rapidly between different formulations and packaging formats. The result is a manufacturing operation capable of producing hundreds of different products while responding quickly to changing customer requirements.
Alongside growth in manufacturing capability, Palace has undertaken significant investment in facilities. More than £2m has been invested during the past two years, including the addition of a fourth automated production line and new warehouse capacity.
While manufacturing capacity and efficiency is priority number one, the company is also keen to draw attention to its beneficial role in both the local and wider industry communities. Recent sustainability initiatives have included infrastructure improvements, solar energy installations and the development of lower-weight adhesive products designed to reduce transportation requirements and make handling easier for installers. All of these changes contributed to the business being recognised at last year’s TTA Awards for its industry-leading sustainability efforts.
Closer to home, Palace is part of the Liverpool Innovation in Business programme, and has been recognised for contributing some £500m to the local economy, for which it received the Liverpool City Region Trailblazer Award.
With the company’s turnover growing by more than 15% in recent years, Palace has ambitious targets to carry it forward into the future to show what a serious player in the UK tile market it really is.
www.palacechemicals.co.uk
