74 | BUILDING Shaw Building T T Hugh de Lacy Demand on up for aluminium cladding The Cliffs, a three bedroom home near Tuatapere has attracted as much attention for its aluminium cladding as it has for its stunning views. It’s still an up-market product – about the level of cedar timber, proprietor Brad Shaw reckons – but aluminium house cladding is in increasing demand with Invercargill-based residential construction company Shaw Building. Brad Shaw’s been building houses in Southland under his own signature since 2012 when he came back from an extensive OE in Europe, playing rugby in Holland and Germany. He’d come out of his carpentry apprenticeship with Invercargill company Hamish Broomfield Building in 2009, and was keen to take his experience of playing in the front row for the Wyndham Rugby Club in Southland onto the European stage. He found himself first in Holland playing for a team called the Bassets and working for a company that exported roses. A year later he was off to Germany for two years, playing for a club in Pforzeim and working in the building industry, before coming home to start up his own residential building company. Within six months he was able to take on his first staff member, and today Shaw Building has a staff of six facing a continuing steady workload despite the easing of the extreme pressure that characterised the previous two years in the New Zealand building industry – something that Brad’s not too sad about. “The market’s going a bit quiet at the moment but that’s quite a relief because the pressure on it before was horrible for a while. “Rising interest rates and materials costs are cooling things but we’ve still got work ahead of us for at least six months, and there’s still a nation-wide housing shortage, so we’ve got no concerns about the longer-term outlook,” Brad says. And while demand for Shaw Building’s services remains buoyant, so too does that for the aluminium cladding that Brad finds himself applying to an increasing number of his new homes. His cladding supplier is New Zealand-owned and Auckland-based Flashclad NZ which, in 2006, was the first company to introduce the Aluminium Mechanical Flashing System to the country, to separate critical head, jamb and sill functions on aluminium joinery. Today the flashing system has expanded to all-of-house cladding, and Flashclad has five franchises alongside the Auckland one servicing the whole country. The company was launched to address flaws it saw in existing cladding systems, achieving under New Zealand Standard 4284 a 4.500kPa test score as a watertight cladding and flashing system on a standard 20mm cavity depth without the use of foams or sealants. Brad Shaw is finding the leak-proof non-rusting Flashclad range being specified for more houses, not only because of its long-term performance but for the range of cladding profiles on offer. He recently completed a million-dollar three-bedroom house called The Cliffs, near Tuatapere, that has attracted a lot of attention as much for its handsome aluminium cladding as its stunning southern outlook towards Te Wae Wae Bay, Stewart Island and Fiordland. Brad’s expecting to receive more aluminium cladding specifications because Flashclad NZ was recently acquired by a new company that’s “pushing the product more,” he says. While the outlook in Southland remains good, especially for aluminium cladding, Brad says there’s been no let-up on the pressure to find staff and, like many other builders round the country, he’s taken up the strategy of meeting his own ongoing labour requirements by hiring apprentices, of whom he has three at the moment. “It’s virtually impossible to find qualified carpenters and other tradesmen, and that situation doesn’t look like changing in the foreseeable future. “Not that that bothers me too much: I’m happy with the size of the business at the moment, and I’m not planning on any great expansion,” Brad says. • Br icklaying • Block Laying • Plaster ing Phone Brennan 027 372 8296 melvinmasonry@gmai l .com • Stone • Paving Southland & Central Otago • Driveways • House Floors • Sheds and Garages • Outdoor Areas • All Dairy Work • Coloured and Exposed Finished QUALITY AND EFFICIENCY GUARANTEED 021 770 952 - sheenercrete@xtra.co.nz
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