YPIE Tour Blog Day Nine: CD UK Ltd

Craig Thurston of Howdens Joinery blogs about the YPIE group’s trip to CD UK Ltd.

We all arrived at CD UK Ltd, distributors of Corian products, and were greeted by Gary Baker, Managing Director, who ran through a brief agenda for the day and introductions before kicking off the session.

Gary gave us an overview of the company and how his father started the business in the late 70s, utilising Corian material for the first time in the UK market place.

This was then followed by a session on how Corian is made by DuPont and the early origins of the material. Peter Watson, Technical & Training Manager, then gave us an overview and demonstration on the properties of the product and its different uses in both commercial and domestic applications.

Peter provided us with a comprehensive demonstration of how damages can be reworked out of the product to make it as good as new in many cases.

This was then followed by a session in CD UK’s workshop where we got to see and have a go at thermoforming the material.

The visit has changed our perceptions of the Corian product and how functional it is. Coming from a kitchen background myself, it was incredibly interesting to view the various uses and markets for a material which I had always associated solely with the kitchen sector.

The focus on the future was clear within the company’s workshop through their investment in new machinery which drew a number of similarities to our own companies and their focus on the future.

Finally we would like to thank everyone at CD UK Ltd for their time and input during the day, it was thoroughly worthwhile and engaging for us all.