THE INQUIRY heard from former employees of Kingspan, with claims including that it ‘stretched [the] truth’ on fire safety claims and that it was ‘common knowledge’ the K15 product’s fire certificate was based on ‘old tech’.
The Guardian, ITV News and Inside Housing reported on the inquiry’s hearings featuring former employees of Kingspan, with former technical project manager Ivor Meredith stating that he was uncomfortable with how the company’s phenolic foam Kooltherm K15 insulation was being marketed, and that he was ‘under pressure’ to get test results that proved it was safe.
Mr Meredith said in his witness statement that ‘we were struggling to get the technology to pass, to justify our lie’, and having been fired for gross misconduct in 2015, when he appealed against his dismissal he told Kingspan: ‘I have been put in a situation where I have had to maintain performance that perhaps our products don’t deserve.’
The first Kingspan employee to give evidence at this stage, Mr Meredith had worked there since 1999 and started in the company’s factory, before moving to oversee the K15 fire tests. He said that he took a ‘negative view’ of the foam, and was uncomfortable with telling the market that it was Class 0, which ‘suggested it was safe for use on tall buildings when it was not in all cases’.
One test of the material in 2007 became a ‘raging inferno’ with temperatures reaching 600 degrees Celsius, and the insulation was ‘burning under its own steam’, according to a report he made to colleagues. Supervisors had to extinguish the test because it ‘risked setting fire to the laboratory’, and Mr Meredith said he was ‘shocked that the phenolic was burning ferociously. I sent a very animated report around to my superiors to make sure they were aware’.
Recommending adding fire retardant to the fire, Mr Meredith was then criticised by managers for ‘not being very positive about Kingspan products’, and added that ‘I don’t think they were concerned in the same way as me ... I felt I was never heard on issues like this’. By the time he was fired, the product had been sold for use on ‘at least’ 230 high rises, and Mr Meredith felt pressure to ensure it did not have to be ‘pulled off the wall’ by delivering proof of its safety.
He said that ‘there was a lot of critical stuff going on that could have resulted in major claims against Kingspan so I had to keep my head above water, and sort it out for Kingspan’, and was worried the company would be accused of ‘misselling’. It had produced a leaflet to ‘undermine rivals’ that was titled ‘What’s lurking underneath your façade?’, and which claimed K15 had been ‘assessed and approved in accordance with BR135’, the fire performance criteria for cladding systems.
However, the leaflet was forced to be withdrawn because the Building Research Establishment (BRE), which undertakes the BR135 tests, had not approved K15, and Mr Meredith told the inquiry that ‘I am very sorry for what has happened. We should perhaps have been clearer in our marketing’. While K15 was not used across the entirety of Grenfell, Celotex – the major insulation supplier – copied Kingspan’s approach to marketing its RS5000 product by ‘making similar claims’.
Mr Meredith also described how Kingspan worked with Local Authority Building Control to obtain a certificate for K15 declaring it was of ‘limited combustibility’, which was ‘wrong’ and ‘later withdrawn’. Asked why Kingspan did ‘not stop that assertion’, he said that ‘we were clutching at anything that would support the use of our products and [were] very busy trying to balance all the needs of the company’s business development;.
The company had told the inquiry previously that it ‘did not know’ K15 would be used on Grenfell, and that building regulations at the time ‘permitted its use on tall buildings as long as the overall cladding system was compliant. It also said that ‘none of the testing, certification or marketing literature which was current at the time of the supply of K15 for use on Grenfell Tower suggested that K15 was non-combustible or of limited combustibility’.
However, it apologised at the inquiry for ‘process shortcomings during the period of 2005 to 2014’, which included that ‘certain statements made in K15 product literature and advice provided to customers, were not sufficiently clear or emphatic in explaining the [testing] limitations’. The inquiry also heard from Mr Meredith that it was ‘common knowledge’ that Kingspan was relying on a fire safety test certificate from ‘old technology’ for the K15 product.
He said that staff were ‘aware’ that a 2005 test of K15 had been done with materials featuring a ‘different fire performance to that sold from 2006 onwards’, with the inquiry having already heard that Kingspan had withdrawn test certificates for K15 from that test. A company statement from 23 October was shown to the inquiry on Monday noting this, and stating that ‘we have undertaken a comprehensive review of all past and current test data which relates to K15’.
The statement added: ‘It became apparent that the K15 manufactured in 2005 would not be representative of the product currently sold on the market from 2006 to today. While both products are still phenolic foam, Kingspan is now of the view that there are sufficient differences to consider withdrawing the test report.’
Asked by inquiry counsel Kate Grange why the company had continued ‘to rely on the 2005 test data after September 2006 when the new technology was introduced’, Mr Meredith said: ‘It was very difficult – although I was constantly pushing back trying to box out the formulations used and the different characteristics of the product – I was basically being told that the materials were the same, the new technology was essentially better. But it performed differently in fire. I wouldn’t say worse, it just performed differently.’
The inquiry also uncovered documents from a secret 2008 test of K15, which said the insulation ‘burnt very ferociously’ as it ‘spectacularly failed’, despite the product having been ‘advertised for use on high rises for two years’. The December 2008 test held by BRE utilised the newer form of the product, which the test’s analysis said was ‘very different in a fire situation to the previous technology which has passed several similar tests’.
While the older phenolic foam insulation ‘would turn into a light ash and fall away leaving [no] substance to feed the fire’, the new foam ‘burnt very ferociously and gave the top cavity barrier a serious hammering’. Kingspan officials said of that test that the insulation ‘was burning on its own steam and the BRE had to extinguish the test early because it was endangering setting fire to the laboratory’.
Mr Meredith noted one of the changes brought in with the new product was to perforate foil facers, which made it ‘more robust and easier to manufacture’, and his analysis stated: ‘Perforations in the Phenolic foil facers have caused a reduction in the Euroclass when tested... Loss of the perforations may help?vIn all honesty from what I have seen the way the phenolic burned is of the most concern. Therefore we need to add a fire retardant. Which could help us get Class O.’
Subsequent emails he had sent to superiors Philip Heath and Malcom Rochefort stated that the ‘question of K15s bad fire performance is no longer just an internal one. It would seem Offsite [Kingspan’s sister company who used the product] had a very dramatic test failure’.
Other emails showed how he was coming under ‘increasing pressure’ to explain the product’s fire performance to Offsite colleagues, with Mr Meredith writing to Mr Heath: ‘Help – I’m getting seriously grilled now. We need to ensure continuity of our answers otherwise we will destroy our relationship and never be taken seriously again – also I may get accused of being a liar if we change out story.
‘Are we saying that the product supplied which failed their test is the same product that we got to pass the test?’
Mr Heath ‘did not respond to his questions’ and ‘merely asked who was grilling him’, while Ms Grange also showed emails between senior Kingspan managers and the British Board of Agrement (BBA), coming after the latter had recognised the K15 certificate it had awarded ‘did not clarify that the product was suitable for use only when used in the specific set up which was tested’. It wrote to Kingspan to tell them that the certificate would be changed.
After Kingspan told the BBA in response that it would have ‘no option’ but to pass ‘cost implications’ onto the BBA, Mr Heath ordered Mr Meredith and colleague Gareth Mills to let the BBA proposals ‘gather dust’.