please find the seventh edition of our FEST newsletter below.
Yours
Sue Knight, Director General FEST
Nikolaus Klein, Matthew Gray, Editors, Hassan Abou Jawhar
(Editors)
The FEST Webinar
Last month FEST hosted a successful Webinar entitled "Wholesalers in the post-Covid World', attended by interested parties from across Europe. The event was opened by David Moody, a leading industry consultant based in the UK, who introduced Stefan Van Rompaey, a Belgian expert in retail trends.
It will take at least until the summer of 2022 before we expect the price of some building materials to drop. Construction firms' suppliers first need to improve their historically low levels of inventories. The price of timber and steel will probably settle down earlier.
We only have to look at the extreme weather patterns experienced worldwide in the past year, with unprecedented heatwaves and catastrophic rainfall causing devastating fires and flooding across the globe, to realise that tackling carbon is the single biggest challenge we face over the coming decade.
The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to affect the construction sector. Due to the measures taken by individual countires, the national markets have all developed differently. It is interesting to compare the differences and similarities between the current situation and the 2008 financial crisis.
Svenska Rörgrossistföreningen/ Maskinentreprenörerna/ VVS Fabrikanterna
To create a sense of urgency towards the need to renovate and modernize water and sewerage systems requires a long-term strategy. Firstly, it is not the sexiest topic for the media. Secondly, governing the systems is an expensive and slow onset challenge that politicians avoid and prefer to pass on to the next political term.
