Roman to resume production today

Leading British shower manufacturer Roman is to resume production today to deal with an anticipated “pent-up demand” from clients, the firm’s managing director has said.

Around a quarter of the firm’s more than 200 UK employees will return to work at its plant in Newton Aycliffe, Country Durham, from today.

Roman’s managing director David Osbourne was interviewed for Sunday night’s BBC News at Ten, discussing the firm’s plans to reopen its doors, as part of a wider segment on impact of the lockdown on the nation’s businesses.

“We’re sort of envisioning pent-up demand,” Osborne told BBC business correspondent Katie Prescott. “We’ll see hopefully quite a busy May, June… and we’ll see where it settles from there.”

He added: “I don’t know what normality is going to be, whether it’s going to be October, November before we have a normal month.”

The announcement comes as two of the country’s largest homebuilding companies, Persimmon and Vistry, reopen sites with new social distancing guidelines in place. Ibstock, one of Britain’s biggest brick-makers, is also set to resume production today.