Trade blooms in lockdown for paving firm as home DIY soars

Demand for paving stones from Primethorpe Paving, based in Werrington Bridge Road, went up by 115 per cent, brick sales rose by 194 per cent while the call for cobbles soared by 500 per cent.

The overall sales spike of 114 per cent saw the business owners working 12 hour shifts, six days a week after the eight staff had been furloughed.

Managing director Gary Brace said the business had been poised for a damaging blow during the Covid lockdown and had been totally unprepared for the sudden increase in demand.

He said: “We were initially concerned about going into lockdown across the busiest months of the year for a landscape gardening supply business.

“We survive on our spring and summer markets, so the timing for us couldn’t have been worse.

“Or so we thought. It seems obvious now, but with people confined to their homes and forced to cancel summer holidays, there was all of a sudden a huge demand for home and garden based projects and plenty of budget for people to undertake them. We have never been busier.

“There was a huge surge in national demand compared to normal and there was more demand locally too. But nationally we noticed a huge jump.”

The team was slowly reintroduced back to full working capacity with only a handful of delayed orders and never by more than 24 hours.”

He added: “As it turns out, with a hardworking team following our robust systems, we can handle volumes that we previously didn’t expect.

“We were only held up by stock levels in the end, so now we know the kind of fulfilment levels we can reach, we know there is plenty of room for us to expand into. The future is bright.”