Here at Premier Polytunnels we know that the price of products is important to our customers. It’s also important that the quality of the products you buy from us are of the highest quality, with many customers telling us that they need a strong polytunnel as it is extremely windy where they live.
When a bird goes “cheep” it wants attention – when a polytunnel goes cheap it needs attention! Quality is not cheap, but it does offer excellent value. This is why we work hard on sourcing the best quality materials for our products and building great working relationships with our suppliers.
Raw material price increases
As many of you will know, the costs of most raw materials have been increasing dramatically since March 2020 and continue to soar as we near the end of 2021.
Steel prices have increased by 215% in the last 18 months and timber prices have increased an average of 125%. Industrial and engineering supplies including hardware and ironmongery, plastic extrusions, and aluminium parts continue to increase in price, and the cost of packaging materials also continues to rise.
One of our suppliers has recently informed us of an unavoidable 22% price rise and a new ‘minimum order’ demand – A small increase compared with other material suppliers, but the first increase in over 10 years from this particular supplier.
The current shortage of haulage drivers in Europe and the increasing cost of fuel have also resulted in the national courier companies, which we use to deliver our products to our customers, adding surcharges to their pricing and, in some cases, suspending their ‘next day delivery’ services (with 2-3 days now being quoted for deliveries).
What has caused this increase?
So why is this happening? Well, a global shortage of some raw materials began in March 2020 with the arrival of the coronavirus. A rise in demand for materials throughout the world began to push prices up in 2020 and the cost of shipping from places such as China jumped up by over 350%. (Although we don’t source our materials from China, the situation there has had a knock-on effect on the worldwide supply chain of many materials).
Furthermore, there has been a rise in shipments of timber to America, on top of the global demand for timber, resulting in reduced availability here in the UK.
We’ve already mentioned the dreaded ‘C’ word (coronavirus) once – we’ll avoid mentioning the ‘B’ word (*ahem* Brexit) and its impact on imports and tariffs.
Premier Polytunnels’ supplies
We are fortunate to still be able to source raw materials from our usual suppliers and we work hard to keep our stock levels healthy, even to the extent of doubling the size of our storage yard last year. While material shortages combined with soaring prices keep us on our toes, we always endeavour to source high quality materials at the best possible price – we will not compromise on quality by sourcing cheaper, inferior materials.
Price freeze
As we mentioned at the start, we know that the price of products is important to our customers. Therefore, we are ‘freezing’ all of our prices until Monday 24th January 2022. There has never been a better time to grab a bargain and get ready for 2022, whether you need a polytunnel or fruit cage for growing your own fruit and veg, or a sheep house polytunnel for the busy lambing season.
Premier Polytunnels price increase
To ensure that we can continue to offer the highest quality products together with our unrivalled customer service, we will be increasing some of our product prices from Monday 24th January 2022.
Thank you
We greatly appreciate your understanding and we would like to thank all of our customers for your continued support and custom.
Contact us
If you would like to talk to us about anything we’ve mentioned in this statement, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
If you have any queries or questions about any of our products or if we can help with anything else, please contact the Sales Team on 01282 811250 or by e-mail at info@premierpolytunnels.co.uk