Fletcher Building accuses BGC of blame-shifting in plumbing nightmare
Fletcher Building has accused Western Australia’s largest homebuilder BGC of blame-shifting and making unfounded allegations over plumbing pipe leaks in 11 per cent of new houses built in WA between 2017 and 2022 which used a specific Fletcher product.
Fletcher Building chief executive Ross Taylor said a detailed study by Fletcher and external experts had found it was poor installation of the Iplex Pro-fit thin pipes in new houses, and generally lower governance standards for the plumbing industry in WA compared with other states, that were the core issues.
“This is a Perth issue, not a national issue,” Mr Taylor said at a briefing on Friday. He said 17,500 houses had been built by different builders in WA over the five years using the Pro-fit pipes, and 65 per cent of them had been constructed by BGC. He said 15,000 homes built on the east coast of Australia where Pro-fit pipes were installed had a leakage rate of 0.19 per cent. The failure rate in Perth was much higher at 10.9 per cent.
WA builder BGC has been accused of blame-shifting by Fletcher Building over Iplex pipe leaks in a large number of new homes built between 2017 and 2022.
He also said BGC’s claims made on Wednesday that the total cost of fixing up all the houses impacted could be $709 million was “self-serving and sensational”. Fletcher’s view was that a more realistic cost for the industry remediation was between $50 million to $100 million.
The Pro-fit pipes, which have not been sold in Australia since mid-2022, were manufactured at an Iplex plant in Albury in New South Wales. Resin used in the manufacturing process came from Korean manufacturer Ylem.
Fletcher, which is listed on both the ASX and the New Zealand stock exchanges, has been under a
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