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Staff at insulation giant Kingspan, which made some of the combustible material used in the Grenfell Tower, joked in 2016 that claims about how safe the product was were “lies” and should be scrapped.
Text messages sent the year before the June 2017 disaster, which claimed 72 lives, suggested that employees believed the company was lying to the market about the “shit product” fire behavior, but one of them seemed to think it was funny, the audience listened consultation.
Kooltherm K15 plastic foam insulation had failed several large-scale fire tests, but was being sold in high-rise buildings based on tests related to the spread of flames across the sheet surface rather than the entire material, and in a complete older version. -Scale test of a different and less fuel version of the product.
In a November 2016 text chat, Peter Moss, a member of the company’s technical team, asked his colleague Arron Chalmers about the fire performance of foam insulation, which was marketed with a class 0 rating, the safer for the spread of flames. across the surface of a product.
After telling Mr. Moss it was class 0, Mr. Chalmers added, “You don’t actually get class 0 when we test the entire product though. LOL. “
Mr. Moss responded, “WHAT? Did we lie? Honest opinion now. “
Mr. Chalmers said, “Yeahhhh. Fully K15 tested – earned class 1 [a worse performance]. Serum. LOL. “
Moss’s response was: “Shit product. Scrap.”
Mr. Chalmers later explained that it was “worded in such a way as to ‘imply’ that the coating can give you a class 0, but don’t tell anyone.”
Moss then cited Kingspan’s marketing literature: “Kingspan Kooltherm K15 is class 0 (non-combustible).”
Mr. Chalmers said, “All the lies, my friend? All we do is lie here “
Adrian Pargeter, Kingspan’s chief marketing and technical officer, was asked by research advisor Richard Millett QC about the exchange, who suggested that it was “a concise summary of the Kingspan culture at the time.” The Kingspan executive said: “I don’t think that’s true at all.”
“Do you accept that the culture of lying about the fire safety of products is particularly serious, because you are taking risks with people’s lives?” Millett asked.
“I don’t think we’re lying,” replied Mr. Pargeter. “I can’t explain why they describe it as such between the two of them.”
Earlier that year, during an email discussion on product rating, Mr. Chalmers also said, “Yeah, it seems a bit misleading, doesn’t it? Claiming class 0 just for a facer test when, like you said , is intended to be a marketed product. “
At the time, a Kingspan executive on the thread chimed in and said: “Perhaps it would be better if I had a meeting to discuss this matter verbally.”
Pargeter said this was because the email chain was getting longer. “I don’t think it was a trap; it was just a literal interpretation of [the building regulations]. “
“It’s a trap,” Millett said. “And it’s cheating because you know very well that that’s not what the people who gather [the building regulations] he meant, but he was taking advantage of a clever clog reading to try and sell the product. “
“I don’t think it was a clever read,” Pargeter said. “This is how it was written.”
The investigation continues. – Guardian
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