In January 1981’s Glass Age founding editor Allan Plowman wrote: Those other doctors who seek to analyse the health of the glass industry invite a measure of scepticism.

Who can resist, however, a survey headed Glass Manufacturers Face a Fragile Market?

Moreover, the facetiousness continues to inform the text of the press release on Business Ratios Reports from Inter Company Comparisons Ltd. It talks about companies ‘cracking’ under the strain of the recession, warns of the danger of ‘looking through rose coloured glasses’, and indicates those window manufacturers least likely to ‘put up the shutters’. The bright spot – as though one couldn’t guess – would seem to be the home improvement and double glazing market. The heading to this survey: ‘Window Manufacturers Latch on to Good Times’.

Remorselessly the waggery continues: ‘But how Insulated is the Industry from the Current Recession?’ A quick solution to the cash flow problem, apparently, is to make your customers pay their bills more promptly, within the appalling average debt collection period of 106 days.

Only one company in the 1981 Top 10 is known to us today. Steel and aluminium specialist West Leigh (www.west-leigh. co.uk, tel. 020 7232 0030) came sixth with a profit margin of 13.7 per cent on £1.7 million turnover.

Source

Glass Age