UAP’s 2021 Roundup!

2021 has been another year of uncertainty for many, but we’ve still managed to keep busy with launches, events, initiatives and more. Here’s everything we’ve been up to this year!

25th Anniversary

2021 marks 25 years since UAP began in 1996. All those years ago, we started with just a door knocker, under the company name “Universal Imports”. Fast forward to now, and we’re a £22 million business, selling more than 3,000 products across 25 countries with a wide portfolio of brands. Read more about our 25 years in business here.

Kinetica+ K4

This year, we launched our strongest 3* Euro cylinder yet – the Kinetica+ K4.
Thanks to its advanced technology and unrivalled built-in performance at every turn, it takes security, safety, hygiene and easy-fit functionality to a whole new level.
Learn more about Kinetica+ K4 here.

G21 Award Winner

UAP, having been announced as finalists for three categories, won the award for Covid Business Hero at the G21 Awards! We won in this category due to our quick response to the pandemic, production of our own PPE, and our donation of over £500,000 of PPE to local charities and businesses.

We were also finalists for Best New Product for Soterian Slim, Best Training & Development, and listed as finalists in the 2021 Engage Awards for Best Employee Support During a Crisis, Best Use of Training, and Best Use of Knowledge Management.

Doggy Day Care

In September, we opened our own UAP Doggy Day Care to allow staff to bring their pups to work with them after the pandemic. Many UAP staff dogs regularly use the day care and it’s been a big success!

PPE Donations

We began producing our own high-quality PPE early in the pandemic, and donated much of it to local charities, schools, and businesses. At Christmas in 2020, we donated boxes of face masks, gloves, and hand sanitizers to many of Manchester’s homeless charities including Coffee 4 Craig, Barnabus, Mustard Tree, and Lifeshare. As the Delta variant spread in mid-2021, we donated to the North West’s Emmaus charities, Bolton hospices, local schools, and mosques.

MLA Expo

October saw the return of the MLA Expo in Telford. We attended to promote the new Kinetica+ K4 lock, Locking Systems cylinders, and the Fullex Ionic electronic lock. We also had our own coffee stall on the stand provided by Koala Koffee!

Intelligent Hardware Retail Range

We launched Intelligent Hardware’s new Essential Retail Range, designed to provide everything you need for your door solutions, fully tested and selected by experts. Click here to view the range and here to download the brochure.

Expanding UAP

In 2021, we expanded the company by 15%, increasing our number of employees to 89. This follows our substantial growth in 2020, when we were able to expand our workforce during the pandemic at an unusual time when many companies were shedding staff. We also tripled our workforce in China and set up a new office in Shanghai, an exciting development for UAP.

Webinars

Throughout the year, we’ve been hosting weekly webinars for staff, as well as public training webinars about fire doors, uPVC doors, and composite doors. We held a total of 62 webinars across 2021!

Fire Door Safety Week

Every year, we show support for Fire Door Safety Week (FDSW), which raises awareness for proper fire door maintenance and prevention of fires.

FDSW aims to highlight key industry issues and provide a wealth of fire door information and guidance for free in the hopes of saving lives from preventable fires. They offer a Fire Door Safety Week Toolkit, offering tips, information and resources on how to improve fire safety in residential and commercial builds.

Firemongery

UAP brand Firemongery released a new brochure at the end of this year for internal door hardware. Click here to read or download the brochure.

Firemongery also added a range of ready-made packs for a variety of solutions, including sashlocks, latches, closers, and more: See them here.

Customer Survey

We were scored as excellent or very good by 85% of customers in our 2021 customer satisfaction survey, across multiple criteria including quality and accuracy of order fulfilment.

Carried out annually, the customer survey is just one of the tools that UAP uses for customer engagement, and it plays a pivotal role in our growth strategy.

Blog Posts

We posted 52 blog posts on our website in 2021, covering a wide range of topics from our latest company news, product features, and more. Click here to visit our blog page and take a look.

Web Users & Page Views

As of the beginning of December 2021, we had 247,692 users and 1,474,365 page views across our web platforms.

Magazines

This year, we published 8 UAP magazines. Towards the end of the year, we merged our two publications, Hardware Intel and Cars, Keys & Locks magazine together. Read and download our magazines on Issuu here.

Emails

We send out regular Eshot emails containing UAP’s latest company news, events, product launches, and more. In 2021, we sent 236 Eshots to a total of 2,176,808 recipients!

Video Views

This year, we amassed over 82,698 video views across all our channels. We’ve featured videos of our full podcast episodes, the launch of our new Kinetica+ K4 cylinder, fire door webinars, uPVC training videos, and more.