Shower manufacturer Haven, part of the Roman group of Companies, is bucking the current trend by moving the manufacture of their sister company’s range of enclosures and bath screens away from China and will instead be manufacturing the products at their County Durham factory headquarters. Roman has proudly flown the flag of British design and manufacture since they were founded in 1985. However, in a move engineered to combat low cost, low quality imports from China, Roman set up sister company Haven in 2006. Haven introduced a range of price sensitive models that are carefully designed by Roman’s team of designers, but to remain price competitive, they were manufactured in China. The company has now decided the time is right to move the manufacture of these products to the UK, so they will be produced alongside their other shower enclosures and bath screens.
This move has been enabled due to the movement of the pound against the US dollar, coupled with higher costs from the Far East, which has seen the price of imported goods experiencing great fluctuation – this is alongside increased shipping costs. Roman has made the decision to take advantage of the company’s own infrastructure and, due to the rapid growth in demand for Haven products, moving the manufacture in-house to Roman now makes sense financially for the company.
Roman began the move of Haven product manufacture to the UK in March 2011, this was then done in two phases with all remaining products being moved to UK manufacture at the end of 2011. Following the move, Roman has been backing the Stoves campaign to promote and support UK manufacture and is promoting all Roman and Haven products as being UK manufactured by displaying the Stoves ‘Made in Britain’ tick logo.
The Haven range is a low cost alternative to Roman’s own range of products which are designed with the highest specification for the luxury end of the bathroom market.
Roman Group Managing Director, David Osborne commented: “Being a British designer and manufacturer is very important to us as a company. Therefore we are extremely pleased to be able to move the manufacture of all Haven products into the main factory in Newton Aycliffe. At Roman we have over 25 years experience of manufacturing showering solutions and prefer to keep a close eye on all our products as they are built and delivered. Due to the current market conditions and the popularity of the Haven products, we are now able to make the move and bring the manufacture of these products in house. We have stringent quality control measures for all our products and this will now be applicable to all the Haven enclosures and bath screens. We are proud now to be able to promote these products as being UK manufactured.”
