England 05/04/2013 – Across the UK firms are rationalising their businesses and making better use of their existing resources, including their workspaces
The recession has, overall, not been good for British business. However, some sectors have benefited from today’s challenging trading environment. Firms that sell goods and services that help firms to rationalise their businesses, reduce their overheads and make better use of their existing resources are amongst the ones that have benefited. Take for example firms who make steel partition walls. Partition walls are not a product that would obviously benefit from a recession. However, that appears to be exactly what has happened. Demand for, easy to erect, partition walls has grown rather than shrank, in the past few years.
It seems that, more and more firms are using them to divide their existing trading space up to rent out to other businesses or help them to diversify their business. They are being used in offices, warehouses and retail outlets.
An empty space in a warehouse can quickly be cordoned off from the rest of the warehouse and leased out to a smaller firm. Offices can, also be constructed from these partition walls. Some firms have done this to save money. By putting their offices on the warehouse or factory floor, some firms have been able to eliminate the need to lease separate officespace. Many have also found that communication between office-based staff and the shop floor staff has improved, which has benefitted productivity.
The availability of better insulation materials, has significantly improved soundproofing. This has made it possible to create new workspaces even in extremely noisy environments. Good insulation also means that it is just as cheap to keep these workspaces at the right temperature as it is a workspace built with more traditional building materials.
Steel partitions used to create a range of spaces
Your Steel Partitions have seen interest in their products rise steadily in the past few years. They have sold steel partition walls for several decades, over which time they have developed stable walls that can be put up, taken down, and reused quickly. At first customers primarily used their walls to create office space. Today, they see them being used to build storage facilities, canteens, production lines and many other types of new spaces.