After a one-week delay, my fearless predictions for 2022 are here. Let’s go…
Yes- Interior Growth this year:
I called for Glass to be more dominant than ever in 2021 based in part on major design shifts to the interior using more glass. Unfortunately, the delay of returning to any sort of work also delayed this growth. Well, I am going for it in 2022, interiors with tons of glass will take off.
More 8mm:
The trend really started to push with more 8mm glass in IGU’s then the traditional 6mm, and I think in 2022, it’s going to become more standard than ever. Bigger sizes are demanding this and the quality options improve too. (Though some tempering ovens will need to be upgraded and a bigger need for quality tracking because of this for sure.) The days of 6 over 6 as the ONLY go to are coming to an end.
Rough waters for some-
We are going to lose some businesses this year. I hope not, but my fear is the amount of crazy pricing, supply chain issues, and plain old bad luck will doom some folks. This is one prediction I hope is wrong, but I have a bad feeling about this mostly because some businesses were not as organized as they needed to be or funded as well as they needed to be for them to ride out a monumental mess that certain things became. We will see…
Code Crunch:
The various code and guideline bodies have been pretty mellow lately which means I think we are about to see them raise up. What will it be though? Less glass or call for higher performing glass options? I am confident that the brilliant NGA Superhero Code team will do all they can to keep glass flowing but I think they’re going to be awfully busy this year battling other construction segments.
More than 1 big deal is coming:
We know there are a few massive companies for sale in our industry and I think in 2022 more than 1 will actually get sold. One of these deals will turn the industry on its head too either in who it is sold to or how it is broken up/restructured. This is just a guess, I don’t have any intel yet, just a feel is all. I just hope whoever makes these deals wants to do right by the industry as a whole. Be involved with the NGA, GlassBuild etc. We need to keep that rolling to keep our overall industry healthy and headed in the right direction.
News courtesy of From the Fabricator- Glass & Aluminum Insights Blog