Wednesday 30 November 2011

BWF announces winner of 2011 John Hedgecock Memorial Award at glittering Annual Dinner

The 2011 John Hedgecock Memorial Award was announced on Friday 18th November at the Annual Dinner of the British Woodworking Federation (BWF) at the Waldorf Hotel, London.

Amidst the grandeur of the hotel’s Palm Court, more than 120 joinery industry leaders, timber industry manufacturers and distributors and senior client contacts gathered to celebrate the achievements of the last 12 months.

The 2011 John Hedgecock Memorial Award was given to JELD-WEN for its Howdens Burford door project.

The JELD-WEN Howdens Burford door was launched earlier this year as a special moulded door exclusively designed to compliment Howdens Joinery’s best selling kitchen range, and to provide a family of kitchen frontals and matching joinery doors.

The Shaker-style Burford range includes four and six panel designs from small, wardrobe sized doors to the largest metric sizes, glazed doors and fire door options.

 Ian Purkis, Technical Director of JELD-WEN, Trevor Cossins, Assistant General Manager at JELD-WEN Penrith, and Harry Sample, Product Development manager at Howdens Joinery collected the John Hedgecock Memorial Award from Wendy Trott, MD of Timbmet which sponsored this year’s award.

Ian Purkis said:

“We are so delighted to receive this recognition for what was a true test of international collaboration and innovation in design and advanced timber manufacturing technology.

“Unlike all previous moulded doors, which are essentially flush with moulded details, the Burford is more authentic and representative of true timber stile and rail doors, with sub-flush panels. The Burford moulding required the skin to be manufactured to a significantly higher level of accuracy, and in a format which could be produced in very large numbers at low cost. It has been a real technical adventure. This award recognises the huge amount of hard work put in by the teams at JELD-WEN and Howdens Joinery.”

Harry Sample said:

"The vision of Burford was to use UK manufacturing expertise to bring designs which were previously unattainable to many into a price point that is affordable to thousands of consumers, supporting hundred of British jobs and preserving British manufacturing expertise for the future."

Kevin Underwood, Technical Manager at the BWF, said:

“While superficially this could be classed as a simple moulded door, the look disguises a huge amount of innovation and new thinking. It involved an international project team from Latvia and the UK working to very tight deadlines to overcome technical problems and to achieve the required performance and reliability.

“While the details of the innovative pressing process remain commercially confidential, it has proved successful and the style of door is already selling extremely well – up to 2,000 doors per week in its first few weeks alone, and many tens of thousands of new door sales and extra kitchen sales in 2011.”

The John Hedgecock Memorial Award was first introduced in 2010 as a tribute to the BWF’s former technical manager and one of the leading authorities on woodworking and joinery manufacture who died in 2009. The award is given to individuals, companies, projects or products which demonstrate exceptional technical excellence, achievement or innovation in joinery manufacture.

The John Hedgecock Memorial Award 2011 was sponsored by Timbmet. The premium sponsor for the BWF Annual Dinner was Crystal Units Ltd.

www.bwf.org.uk 



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