‘It promoted and sold a product knowing that it presented a significant danger’ - what the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report said about Arconic

The latest in our series of digests on the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report findings looks at the report's views on cladding manufacturer Arconic.

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Who are Arconic?

Arconic is a vast metal engineering firm, with turnover upwards of $9bn a year. It was formed in a 2016 splitting of the operations of Alcoa - which traces its history back to the historic Aluminium Company of America - into separate divisions. It sells products used in aerospace, packaging, oil and gas, weapons and consumer electronics as well as the building industry all over the world.

Its relevance to this story is because its French arm manufactured and sold ‘Reynobond PE 55’ - the ‘aluminium composite material’ (ACM) cladding which has been identified as the “primary cause” of the rapid fire spread at Grenfell tower. 

What did the report say about the firm? 

In summary, the report said Arconic had “deliberately concealed from the market the true extent of the danger of using Reynobond 55 PE in cassette form, particularly on high-rise buildings”.

The panel concluded that it had “recognised the danger” ACM posed to buildings from as early as 2007, and was also aware that its own product was “considerably more dangerous” when fitted to a building in a particular way (bent into ‘cassettes’ and hung on rails rather than being attached to a wall with rivets). 

But rather than warn the market of this, or remove the product from sale and replace it with a more fire safe version, Arconic “was determined to exploit what it saw as weak regulatory regimes in certain countries (including the UK)”, the report said. 

It said the firm had embarked on “a deliberate strategy to continue selling Reynobond 55 PE in the UK based on a statement about its fire performance that it knew to be false”.

Let’s look into the conclusions in a little more detail:

‘The results were therefore unreliable, as Arconic was aware’

Arconic had testing from 1997 which saw one of its older products - Reynobond 160 PE - achieve the UK standard of ‘Class 0’. This standard was the required grading for cladding panels on high rise buildings, but was actually desperately outdated and permitted seriously dangerous materials to be used.

However, deapite the weaknesses in this standard, Arconic never actually obtained the grading for ‘Reynobond PE 55’, which was similar to the legacy product but chemically different in certain ways. Instead, it relied on the testing on the older product.

The report said it was “not appropriate” for Arconic to have relied on this legacy test data in relation to the newer material.

This issue was directly flagged up by their UK sales rep in 2006, who “admitted that Arconic had provided certificates that did not apply to the products being sold… and expressed concern that it was misleading the market”. 

But the position would get worse, as Arconic sought to target the residential sector specifically.

In December 2004, it ran tests on the material to new European standards. This showed a very serious difference in performance between the material in ‘cassette’ form and when it was riveted to a wall. The riveted version gained a ‘Class B’ - which was enough for it to be used on high rise buildings in the UK (although this test was deemed “unreliable” in the report).

The test on the cassette version, however, was a drastic failure, with Arconic unable to obtain even the lowest classification. But the firm branded this a ‘rogue result’ internally and kept the product on the market, relying on the certificate for the riveted version. It did not carry out any additional tests at this stage to see if it was truly a ‘rogue result’ or not.

“Arconic had no reasonable excuse for failing to confirm by further testing that the result of the only test it had carried out on the product in cassette form was indeed unrepresentative,” the panel said. 

‘There was a significant potential market in the UK and [Arconic] was intending to exploit it’

At a meeting in 2006, Arconic’s salesperson discussed the rising demand for residential projects in the UK, and how it might access this market - which it believed would represent 50% of sales going forward.

“Arconic had recognised that there was a significant potential market for Reynobond 55 PE in the UK and was intending to exploit it,” the report said. 

In order to do so, it recognised that it needed to obtain a certificate from the British Board of Agrement (BBA) - a trusted third party certification body which would confirm to clients that the cladding panels met the required standards for building projects. 

During discussions with the BBA, Arconic was said to have “succeeded in persuading” the firm that the certificate could apply generically to its ACM without distinguishing between the material in cassette and riveted form.

The report said this was “deliberately and dishonestly” concealing the truth about the cassette version’s different fire performance from the BBA.

In fact, Arconic did not provide details about the test failure on the cassette product to the BBA at all, despite being required to do so under its contract. “Those omissions can only have been deliberate,” the report said.

This process was led by Claude Wehrle, one of three Arconic witnesses based outside the UK who refused to give evidence. 

“If Mr Wehrle had given evidence in person he would have had an opportunity to respond to the suggestion that he deliberately and dishonestly misled the BBA into thinking that Arconic held no results of any test of the product in cassette form,” the report said. “Nonetheless, the evidence we have seen… leaves us in no doubt that that is what he did.”

‘It sought to exploit what it perceived to be a weak regulatory regime in the UK while withholding information about the product’s fire performance’

Outside of this testing process, Arconic was also becoming increasingly aware of concerns about ACM. 

These concerns included an industry conference in Norway, where Arconic’s marketing manager saw a presentation warning that attaching ACM to a building was akin to sticking an oil tanker to its external walls and that a fire in such a building could kill 60 to 70 people. 

He provided a report on this presentation to senior figures in the firm. 

“We think it is clear that by late 2007, Arconic had become aware that there was serious concern within the industry about the safety in fire of ACM panels with an unmodified polyethylene core (ACM PE) and had itself recognised the danger they posed,” the report said.

However, it did not remove them from sale in the UK. 

“On the contrary, not only did it continue to manufacture and sell ACM PE, it also sought to exploit what it perceived to be a weak regulatory regime in the UK while withholding from the market relevant information about the product’s fire performance,” the panel said. 

Emails sent between sales representatives and Mr Wehrle in 2009 showed him telling her about the deficiency of the product in cassette form, but instructing her to keep it “VERY CONFIDENTIAL”. Another senior member of staff on the same email chain added: “[T]his shouldn’t even have been mentioned.”

“We think [these emails] show that Arconic was deliberately and dishonestly concealing from the market the true position in relation to Reynobond PE in cassette form,” the panel said. 

Further tests on the material in the early 2010s confirmed its “disastrous” performance in cassette form, but were not disclosed to the BBA, despite the certificate being renewed. 

‘Arconic thus promoted and sold a product knowing that it presented a significant danger to those who might use any buildings on which it was used’

ACM was available with two different types of ‘core’. One - pure polyethylene - was cheaper, but much more dangerous in a fire. The other - fire retardant - blended the plastic with mineral to reduce its combustibility.

Arconic tended to sell the PE product as standard in the UK, due to its price advantage. 

But following fires in the Middle East involving ACM cladding, Arconic’s new UK sales representative, Debbie French, wrote to clients in May 2013, reassuring them that the firm “can control and understand what core is being used in all projects” due its limited supply chain of fabricators and installers, which meant it could “offer the right Reynobond specification including the core”.

She disavowed this email as sales talk when questioned, but the panel took a different view in their report. 

It said the email “may have reflected advice” from senior figures in France and that its purpose was “to persuade customers to continue to buy Reynobond PE in the expectation that [Arconic] would tell them if it was unsuitable for the use to which they intended to put it, although in fact it had no intention of doing so”.

However, following more test failures, in February 2014 Arconic finally told its sales people to stop using the ‘Class B’ classification for the product, due to the test failures in its cassette form. 

By this stage, Ms French was directly involved in winning the sale for the Grenfell Tower project - in full knowledge that she was dealing with a high rise building. 

She received and read the email telling her the Class B classification was being abandoned.

But a few weeks after receiving this email, she still passed on the BBA certificate to the team refurbishing Grenfell, to help win the sale for the job, despite it containing the Class B grading.

The report said this “amounted to a clear invitation to accept everything [the certificate] said at face value” and that she was “clearly at fault” for doing so.

She told the inquiry that she had believed that since the email referred to European classifications, it was not relevant to her clients in the UK. 

The report said it should still have told her clients about it. “Even if the details of the different testing regimes had eluded Ms French, she must at least have understood that any information about the fire performance of Reynobond 55 PE was likely to be of interest to customers in the UK,” it said.

Ultimately, the report placed responsibility with Arconic, due to its misleading marketing and the BBA certificate.  

“Arconic itself must take responsibility for the use of Reynobond 55 PE on Grenfell Tower because it knew that the sale of the product had been obtained on the basis of the BBA certificate which it was well aware gave a misleading impression of the way in which the product in cassette form reacted to fire,” the report said. 

The ACM used on Grenfell would - ultimately - be installed in a cassette configuration due to aesthetic considerations by the planning team at the council, and its performance in the fire reflected the testing carried out by Arconic in 2004. 

The report said that Mr Wehrle and Ms French’s actions needed to be understood within the wider context of Arconic’s behaviour as a firm. 

“[Arconic’s] commercial strategy strongly suggests that neither the failure of Ms French to pass on important information to her customers nor the failure of Mr Wehrle to give that information to the BBA was the result of an oversight,” it said.

“We are satisfied that they reflected a sustained and deliberate strategy by Arconic to continue selling Reynobond 55 PE in the UK based on a statement about its fire performance that it knew to be false. Deborah French’s failure to pass on important information to her customers, wittingly or unwittingly, supported Arconic’s strategy.”

It said the firm had “promoted and sold a product knowing that it presented a significant danger to those who might use any buildings on which it was used”.

What has Arconic said

The firm has provided a statement in which it has said it respects the inquiry process and cooperated with it, and made some financial contributions to those impacted. 

It said it has always maintained that its product is sold as sheets, which are safe to use as a building material and were legal to sell in the UK as well as more than 30 other countries where it was sold - and that it “rejects any claim that AAP sold an unsafe product”.

It said it regularly tested its products and made these tests publicly available, including to customers. It claimed that it “did not conceal information from or mislead any certification body, customer, or the public”.

This is part of a series of digests on the findings of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report. Previous posts have covered RBKC and the TMO as building managers, and as client and building control during the refurbishment,, architects Studio E, fire engineers Exova, cladding sub-contractor Harley , main contractor Rydon, testing house the BRE and the recommendations. I’ll continue to publish posts like this over the coming weeks alongside more general content. Subscribe to keep up to date. 

In other news

• The Institute of Fire Engineers has suspended Adam Kiziak of Trifire, after a hearing in which he was accused of breaching its code of conduct and found to have done so, by not holding adequate insurance and not working within requirements relating to professional competence. He received a six month suspension, with the details published here.

• The government has sent preliminary letters to firms named in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report which form “the first step to stopping them being awarded government contracts”. But how effective a sanction will this be? These firms are not the Tier One contractors who apply for government contracts directly. Instead, they would tend to be engaged as sub-contractors, or (in the case of materials manufacturers) their products would be purchased by those who are spending government money. A more effective penalty would be to freeze them out of all government money altogether by banning those who win government contracts from using them. 

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