Several parts of the Australian and New Zealand plumbing industry came together to share ideas, break down issues and network with peers. Sean Carroll recaps the one-day event.

Australia’s premier business event for the plumbing industry, presented by Lanella Media and Plumbing Connection, the Plumbing Supply Forum (PSF), returned for another year in early June 2024. In partnership with the Plumbing Products Industry Group (PPIG), the PSF showcased leading experts from the manufacturing, regulatory, legal, building and materials sectors.

The night before the one-day event kicked off, there was a networking dinner hosted at the Sydney Airport Pullman Hotel.

Following the meal, Lanella Media general manager Jeremy Sweet and PPIG president Scott Michaels awarded four PSF Lifetime Service Awards to some of the long-standing veterans of the industry. The four recipients were Paul Degnan, Stuart Henry, Dick Michaels and Jeff Patchell. Each of these gentlemen was thanked for their service across the years and for helping grow the industry into what it is today.

This year’s PSF came at a great time as the industry needs strong voices on several issues including the ban (plus potential future bans) on new gas connections, the future of hydrogen in Australia and the continued challenges associated with lead-free fittings.

Before breaking down the event, thanks to the sponsors of the event, Reliance Worldwide (RWC), Neoperl, IAPMO, Zetco Valves and WELS.

Lanella Media general manager Jeremy Sweet introduces HIA chief economist Tim Reardon at the start of the 2024 Plumbing Supply Forum

What’s the situation like on the ground?

The Housing Industry Association (HIA) has access to rich, up-to-date data on the Australian building and construction industry that helps give plumbing product suppliers an insight into where the industry is at.

HIA chief economist Tim Reardon opened the PSF with a domestic forecast for the building and construction industry.

“At the moment, the industry looks like a snake that swallowed a wombat. We had a massive spike in construction jobs at the start of the pandemic that has completely fallen off with economic pressures, supply chain issues and the lack of workers,” he said.

“Treasury and the RBA are asking when the new apartment building numbers are coming and honestly, we don’t know yet but we know that they are coming. There are new jobs coming which will lead to more housing, but we just don’t know when it’s going to get easier.”

Federal and state governments are touting gaudy building targets but Tim said there’s not a single government that believes they’re going to hit those figures.

“Not hitting the huge numbers is actually okay, we just need to get our rate of new builds up,” he explained.

“It’s a double-edged sword. We need infrastructure to bump up the economy but with building and construction companies scrambling to find workers, it’s pushing the cost of labour, pushing up prices of new builds and that’s how we got to where we are.”

During the pandemic, truck and forklift drivers were scarce and factories were experiencing delays as a result. Today, there’s still a labour shortage despite the huge gaps in these roles being mostly filled.

Tim then moved on to the demographics of new home buyers and builders at the moment which, according to Commonwealth Bank data, are comprised mostly of millennials. It makes sense as millennials are now in their mid-30s and are moving into healthier economic situations but it’s a funny juxtaposition from the smashed avocado toast-eating stigma that was placed on them a decade ago.

Studies by the HIA have found that the three main concerns at the top of Australian’s minds are cost of living, hospitals and housing supply. These responses are of particular interest to the plumbing supply industry because they are directly impacted by two of those three.

Tim finished his talk with two promising elements in the Australian building and construction industry. Firstly, home renovations have remained robust and better news for the plumbing industry, bathrooms are the most popular rooms to renovate.

Secondly, shrinkflation has impacted the size of most new builds and while bathrooms have shrunk alongside every room in the house, it’s still the second-most expensive room in new builds. It appears as though home builders are pinching pennies in other parts of the home.

Short and long-term outlooks for copper, metal and alloys

This industry is useless without copper, metal and alloys and CRU Group principal analyst, base metals supply, Piers Montgomery followed up his previous PSF session with an update on the metals industry.

With today’s geopolitical satiation, guessing where the price of metal is going to fall is a tough job and Piers started his discussion by pointing out which predictions he got wrong in the 2022 PSF.

“Firstly, where I went wrong in 2022 is my prediction for the amount of copper needed for electric vehicles (EVs) was way too long,” he said.

He now expects the EV-related copper use to be much higher than it was in his first prediction. On top of this, a rise in both commercial and residential rooftop solar panels has driven the price of copper up with a lot of the demand coming from China.

The lack of copper in the marketplace is hurting other industries like the plumbing supply side which rely on the material.

Making matters worse, the amount of copper being mined was nearly half the projection in 2023, driving prices higher, as many in the room can agree.

“Another factor that we didn’t give enough credit to was the effect of the pandemic. As with other industries, the global shutdown hurt but we’re really starting to see an impact moving forward,” Piers explained.

He added that several mining companies invested heavily in exploration in the past two years but unfortunately, the number of resources that they’ve been able to find hasn’t been as strong as expected.

A silver lining at the end of the whole presentation is that the recycling market has taken huge steps forward and beyond expectations. This has filled the gap that has been made in the industry.

“At the end of the day, you can’t use copper that you don’t have so the supply gap always closes. It looks like a strong recycling market can help bridge some of the concerns people have until consumption dies down in other areas and production increases,” Piers concludes.

Well, well, WELS

Manager of the WELS Scheme, Teresa McMaugh, updated attendees on the management and continuing success of the scheme and improvements that are underway that will further benefit industry and customers.

To start the presentation, Teresea explained how the scheme works from a funding and technical point of view but also included some of the successes the WELS Scheme has had in its time. With its simple star rating on each device that uses water, research by WELS has found that 80% of customers use WELS in purchasing decisions and has led to water savings across the country.

As of the 2022-23 financial year, there were 24,931 products registered to the scheme, mostly made up of taps, showers and toilets.

“That figure it going to go through the roof in the coming years as we introduce plenty of lead-free products that all need to be certified,” she said.

More recently, WELS has been revising its standards to ensure they stay relevant to the industry, updating regulations and reducing unnecessary regulation. Additionally, the scheme has opened to new product categories including commercial-specific products like water bottle fillers, portable dishwashers and more.

WELS is also working on making product registration easier, especially with new products expected to come through with the lead-free legislation. The scheme is looking at ways of reducing admin while maintaining its strict guidelines to ensure only the correct products receive the certification.

Finally, WELS is developing a retailer training package for both educators and plumbing professional development.

Where are we on WaterMark?

Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) director of product certification, Anne-Maree Campbell came on the stage shortly after morning tea to give an update on the WaterMark program. Aside from lead-free, which was covered in the afternoon session, this session looks at which standards relevant to the Australian plumbing industry are coming up for review.

At the time of the Forum, the National Construction Code (NCC) 2025 was up to its public comment phase and Anne-Maree spoke about the topics that were receiving the most interest. They include:

• Changes to NCC 2025 around flexibility in compliance and aligning it with relevant standards.
• New verification methods.
• Removing specification 41 cross-connection hazards.
• Providing clarity around rainwater storage provisions.
• Sanitary pipe plumbing size: Verification methods and assistance with calculating pipe sizing.
• Performance requirements.

To make the public comment phase easier for plumbing professionals, the ACBC has created a new portal that’s more user-friendly.

In the same vein, Anne-Maree said that the ABCB is working on Plumbing Code education, creating a suite of resources to make it more accessible: “This will support innovation with new ways to access reference documents in the NCC.”

This has been an issue that several standards bodies are trying to address with Standards Australia recently moving to a more mobile-friendly interface.

In terms of continuing professional development (CPD), there are ten new CPD modules available and they come with an NCC tutor with handbooks, case studies and videos all available for plumbers.

Moving forward, she said that the ABCB is focusing on risk assessment for non-certified products. Once non-certified products are identified, they find common issues associated with the products, best practices for addressing the issues and so on.

The role of natural gas in a non-gas world

Gas has and will continue to play a vital role in the broader plumbing/gas industry but it’s not without its challenges. In recent times, a lot of misinformation has been spread about the gas sector, particularly from the ‘let’s electrify everything’ lobbyists and following the gas ban in Victoria.

Energy Safe Victoria head of gas installation and equipment safety Enzo Alfonsetti and IAMPO Oceania managing director Paul Bonsak looked at the role of natural gas in the transition to renewable energy and how to navigate the gas ban in Victoria.

The discussion started off on the topic of hydrogen. In lieu of natural gas, which leads to greenhouse gas emissions, hydrogen (green hydrogen, which uses renewable energy in hydrogen electrolysers) could be a replacement for traditional gas installations. Enzo explained the science behind the technology and some of the infrastructure concerns that come with using a new gas source.

“Firstly, there are huge storage benefits to using hydrogen because it can be stored in liquid form which has a far greater capacity,” he said.

He said that if we connect all gas in the Australian network to hydrogen, there will be the equivalent power to six billion Tesla batteries. There’s a lot of potential in hydrogen storage.

Despite this potential, one of the issues is that legislation is lagging behind innovation in this sector. If a home or business owner wants to make the switch to hydrogen fuel cells, they need to individually ask for an exemption from Australian standards. Because of this, not many people are installing them and all the case studies are being conducted in labs.

After the introduction to hydrogen, Paul talked about the Paris Agreement’s goal of cutting all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. While these goals were set at a federal level, each state and territory has decided on their own goals of cutting emissions.

Paul said one of the first issues here is internationally owned, private energy companies who operate on Australian soil. Do they count towards state and territory emissions?

The main issue is that the state and territories went off and decided on their own figures which is going to lead to a dog’s breakfast solution. In Europe, the European Union set goals together and works as a continent towards achieving these goals.

“In Europe, every country is working towards a unified goal and everyone is doing their part to achieve it. In Australia, we immediately split it up,” he said.

The answer, according to Paul, is having the federal government decide and implement a unified goal. Is that goal going to be achieved by 100% electricity? A mix of gas and electricity? What role will hydrogen play? All these questions need to be addressed.

Ensuring compliance in the NSW market

Building Commission NSW director, practitioner compliance, Matthew Whitton spoke about plumbing compliance in NSW, including the commission’s strategy for improving outcomes across the building and construction sector.

The first thing Matthew spoke about was building product reforms: “These are about allowing the regulations to have a better oversight on the whole supply chain process,” he said.

“Instead of dealing with just the installer, we can go up the chain and find out where a fault or non-compliant product started.”

By expanding their powers, the commission’s job doesn’t finish by penalising the installer. Instead of playing Whac-A-Mole with non-compliant products, they now can run up the chain, find the manufacturer and hopefully take the product out of circulation.

This power was granted to the Building Commission NSW in a new bill that was recently passed.

“These powers will be coming in 2025 and I want to work with the industry to ensure the process is completely transparent and to make sure we’re stopping the right people,” Matthew explained.

Following this, Matthew spoke about non-compliant heat pumps, a major issue for the commission.

And then, of course, lead-free products. Matthew said he doesn’t know if the deadline previously mentioned is going to stay where it is but the commission has to operate as if it will and their compliance checks will, as mentioned before, run up the entire supply chain.

Lead-free, the moment we’ve all been waiting for

To close the PSF 2024, everyone was in their seats and the conference room was as full as it had been all day. PPIG president Scott Michaels moderated a session on the industry’s transition to lead-free brass with Chris Lacey (Reliance Worldwide), Anne-Maree Campbell (ABCB), Steve Cummings (GWA Bathrooms and Kitchens), Graham Clark (IAPMO), Simon Fraser (Intertek SAI Global), Raphael Dressler (Neoperl) and Konrad Pradzynski (Galvin Engineering).

The industry has moved well beyond the ‘why’ and is now focused on how best to implement a lead-free environment and be assured that all competitors are playing by the rules. The focus of this session was to exchange expert views about the transition program from several technical and business directions and give attendees a chance to ask any questions they may have.

Steve Cummings started the discussion by talking about his company’s approach to lead-free: “We created a working group on the topic as fast as we could. This way, we could stay abreast of the changes and always have people working on what we should do to transition,” he said.

“Our biggest issue is that at the end of the period, if there are any products left when the deadline hits, it becomes dead stock and they’re all completely useless.”

A lot of the panellists said that even by exploring every avenue, they were left with dead stock and wasted money. The options for the dead stock were melting it down for metal, donating it for education purposes or selling it to a country that didn’t have lead-free legislation in place. The last option was contentious because, ethically, it’s hard to sell products overseas at a discounted rate when the products aren’t specified in Australia for health concerns.

Chris Lacey agreed, adding that RWC also set up a team specifically for the transition to lead-free: “One of the bigger issues for us was product SKUs and communicating these issues up the supply chain so that everyone knew our new products were compliant.”

He added that a godfather arrangement would’ve been preferred to avoid so much dead stock.

IAMPO’s Graham Clark agreed with his peers but acknowledged that, now that most of the hurdles have been jumped, he’s proud of how the industry held together and overcame the problem together. For him, communication has been the most important element of the transition.

“We changed our SKUs a long time ago but now we have to deal with the smaller subcontractors and guys out there on the tools to make sure they’re using compliant products,” Galvin Engineering’s Konrad Pradzynski explained.

He likened it to the transition to WELS products, something he said the older members of the industry can relate to.

ABCB’s Anne-Maree Campbell acknowledged the work of the industry roundtable after the lead-free announcement.

“We needed something to do that was worthwhile that the industry can agree on,” she said.

“By consulting with the industry, we got an expertise that we didn’t have beforehand, and it greatly helped the transition and decisions in lead-free. The experience has given the WaterMark team a great insight into what it means to have a product certified, learn from any pain points and make the process better moving forward.”

There was an extensive Q&A time after the session. The first question asked about a consistent education process for installers. Anne-Maree responded: “We are speaking with practitioners. Will be putting out WaterMark and lead-free awareness campaigns, targeting installers and their staff.”

Simon added: “The lead-free WaterMark is there to make it easier for installers to see. There are some gaps in awareness right now but consistent campaigns, plus effort from the industry and organisations, can play a huge role in filling these gaps.”

One attendee said that they know they can’t get any further extensions on the lead-free deadline, but were wondering if it would be possible to get another extension.

Anne-Maree said that she appreciates the frustration coming from the industry and has tried to convey the needs as best possible.

“Ultimately, we did get an extension that was hard-fought for, but I don’t think there would be another extension as the board has already made a decision and we’re too close to the date now for us to turn around,” she outlined.