Page 22 - HW July 2022

fasteners & fixings
Wider effects from the changing shape of dwellings
The ongoing swing towards multi-unit dwellings is driving change for the players in the fasteners & fixings category.
Tony Castledine, GM Building Product Supply Channel Asia Pacific at MiTek Asia Pacific, cites as a key influence the changing form factor of Kiwi dwellings, meaning the growing numbers of multi-unit projects, which don’t necessarily employ the same components as a standalone house.
“We’re seeing alternative construction methods coming in,” says Tony, which is why MiTek here in New Zealand is starting to leverage its global resources and look outside the local market for solutions to emerging opportunities.
“There is an opportunity with the new styles of building. So, if the market’s looking at cassette flooring and panelisation, then we’ve got a lot of experience trans-Tasman around that.
“We can cross-pollinate and import technologies and resources and concepts and ideas and systems and solutions, not just from Australia but from the USA or from Europe or somewhere else,” he says.
“It’s getting to the stage, I think, where the name MiTek is going beyond just making brackets and being associated with Gangnail plates – it’s exciting!”
www.miteknz.co.nz
architects, engineers and specifiers starting to pay off. Brackets – straps and Concealed Purlin Cleats (CPCs) – are
“traditional thinking” says Luke: “People have been asking us all along, ‘Do you have something better?”
Indeed, SPAX does and has been supplying such products in the European market for years, where brackets are simply seen as old technology, and bracket-less fittings have been in widespread use for quite a long time.
In the New Zealand market however, SPAX among others has slowly and carefully worked on shifting the way Kiwi specifiers and builders think about moving away from tried and tested ways of building and towards some of the de facto fastening products and systems being used in Europe.
It may be a big step for some building industry professionals to change their thinking, says Luke, a “paradigm shift” even, but it sounds like the work put in is now paying off.
“It’s interesting, this year more than others it does seem to me that there is some change happening, a greater uptake of connectors rather than just plates and nails.
“We always used to hear things like ‘Why should we change,’ right?
“But with the move towards greater sustainability and durability in the building industry, the old ways just don’t cut it anymore.”
Graduate architects and engineers in particular are looking for new and different solutions but how have builders reacted to this
20 NZHJ | JULY 2022
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