Irish multinational Kingspan made false claims about insulation used on the facade of the Grenfell Tower in London, where 72 people were killed in 2017 in a fire, a report on the disaster found on Wednesday.
The company “knowingly created a false market” and claimed the product passed tests allowing it to be used on high-rise buildings, the report said.
The almost 1,700-page report, written by inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick, highlighted failures of government, building materials companies, contractors, fire safety experts and local council officials that led to the blaze seven years ago.
The Cavan-based group’s Kooltherm K15 plastic foam insulation board was used on about 5 per cent of the facade, unknown to the company, during a refurbishment of the London tower, completed in 2016.
Romantasy, QuitTok and other words from a dystopia-coded year
Have Ireland’s data centre builders shot themselves in the foot through their own greed?
The old order of globalisation may be collapsing – and bringing Germany with it
Wonderwallets: the cost of everything in 2024, from Oasis tickets to Leinster House bike shelter
They were fitted behind a plastic-cored aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding panels, made by a unit of US metals giant Arconic, used to form the outer layer of the facade system.
K15 passed a fire safety test in 2005 when it was placed behind non-combustible cladding. That meant the product should only have been used in high-rise buildings as part of the exact systems that were tested.
However, K15 was marketed for general use on high-rises. It was used on the Grenfell Tower when there was a shortage of supply of the main insulation material, made by UK rival Celotex.
The inquiry report said Kingspan and Celotex misled the construction market with claims about their insulation boards.
Tests performed in 2007 and 2008 on a new form of K15, which replaced the one used in the 2005 test, “were disastrous, but Kingspan did not withdraw the product from the market, despite its own concerns about its fire performance”, it added.
Kingspan, led by chief executive Gene Murtagh since 2005, has repeatedly highlighted that inquiry expert witnesses provided unequivocal evidence that Arconic’s ACM cladding was primarily responsible for the rate and extent of fire spread.
Kingspan issued a 181-word reaction to the publication of the report, saying it “has long acknowledged the wholly unacceptable historical failings that occurred in part of our UK insulation business”.
“These were in no way reflective of how we conduct ourselves as a group, then or now,” it said. It extended its “deepest sympathies” to those affected.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer said his government would write to companies named in the report “as the first step to stopping them being awarded government contracts”.
Pressure was also building on London’s Metropolitan police from the families of the 72 victims to hasten the prosecution of those responsible for the June 2017 fire, the worst in a residential building in British peacetime.
Mr Starmer, a former prosecutor, said he could not “do or say anything that could compromise any future prosecution, because the greatest injustice of all would be for the victims and all those affected not to get the justice that they deserve”.
Ulster Rugby said earlier this year it will end its sponsorship deal with Kingspan by June 2025, after reviewing it in light of the inquiry.
A spokeswoman for Cavan GAA, sponsored by the group for almost 30 years, declined to comment on the future of its arrangement. Representatives for Kingspan-sponsored golfers Shane Lowry did not respond to efforts to secure comment.
- Sign up for Business push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our Inside Business podcast is published weekly – Find the latest episode here
