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Not just nails and screws people
F.P. Herting and Son plc
Herting’s Fixings has been around for a long time but, outside its core supplier and customer base, it is surprising how little
is known about this formidable, family-run fixings business. Cue for a trip round the London orbital motorway to find out
more.
For a company that seems to have “When we first got involved, standard 2 industry.
successfully hidden its light under the inch x 10 woodscrews were on 104 weeks Nails and screws certainly still occupy a
proverbial bushel for many years, its delivery from GKN. You literally couldn’t buy large proportion of the warehouse shelves. In
managing director is certainly no shrinking them. Most of the official distributors were still 1987, when the company first bought
violet. In fact, there must be occasions when a operating as if they were in the 1930s.” premises big enough to handle the stock, John
meeting with John Herting is equivalent to a Builders, too, still operated from their own Herting was characteristically forthright in
head on confrontation with one of the veteran stockyards, distributing the goods they needed telling Castle Nails it was about time they
London buses that are another of his passions. each day to the building site. Hertings supplied his business direct. After eight
66 years old, or more accurately young, and pioneered the daily site delivery, something months prevarication, they did. “Unfortunately
unquestionably passionate about the family now emulated throughout the UK fixings they went bust, which wasn’t really surprising
business, John Herting started work in his supply industry. considering how they operated,” he recalls.
father’s company in 1957. The son in F.P. The market has gone on changing, and so “We went to Rylands but they also closed
Herting & Son is John; the F is Frederick, a has Hertings. Operating now from a modern their production. Now we import our nails
milling operator in a wartime London aero 80,000 square feet warehouse in Southall, not direct from China.” At the peak Hertings sold
engine factory, who set up a small engineering far from London’s Heathrow airport, the over 120 tonnes of loose wire nails every
tools merchant business. “We had half a retail company employs 115 people and delivers week. Even now, with the rapid growth and
shop in Sunbury town supplying the factories,” over 600 orders daily to building sites domination of collated nailers, the company
explains John Herting. “Of course, the big throughout England, Scotland and Wales. The supplies around 2,000 tonnes of loose nails
engineers merchants had it nicely sown up customer list includes every household name annually. “There’s still no automatic system for
with the manufacturers, that’s how it was in in the building industry and most of their the square, twisted nails used for securing
this country in those days. It was the same for subcontract carpenters and builders. Family metal work, which has also become an
fasteners. Unless you had an account with business, though, it most certainly remains, important part of our business.”
GKN Fasteners you had to buy from an with both of John’s sons directly involved in Hertings committed to the ITW Paslode
authorised distributor.” day-to-day management. Mark Washington nailer program eight years ago. “I told them
The Hertings business switched towards the joined the business eight years ago as we’d be their biggest account, and they
construction market in the mid 1970s. “It was commercial manager; bringing fastener looked at me as if I was a bit stupid,” says
a pure accident,” says John Herting. “A friend expertise from his previous time with SEP. John Herting. Today Hertings takes delivery of
worked for a big acoustic ceiling company in National accounts are the province of Roy two full articulated truckloads of first fix nails
Twickenham. They had real difficulty in getting Hulbert – more than 25 years service with and nailers direct from ITW’s Danish factory
fixings because the supply market was so Hertings means a near-legendary knowledge every month. “We’re the only company in the
inefficient.” of everyone in the building and sub-contract UK that by-passes their Crawley distribution
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