AG, formerly Acheson & Glover, has agreed a two-year strategic partnership with GRAHAM that names it preferred supplier through the end of 2028, a deal that creates a framework for earlier collaboration on specification and lower embodied carbon.

AG, a third-generation family business headquartered in Fivemiletown, Co Tyrone, with more than 65 years of heritage, manufactures paving, walling and facing brick for commercial and residential markets across the UK and Ireland.

GRAHAM, headquartered in Hillsborough, County Down, is a privately owned construction and civil engineering group delivering residential, education, healthcare, commercial, transport and social infrastructure projects across the UK and Ireland.

AG recently supplied products for GRAHAM’s £190m (€222m) Loftlines apartment development and the Nelson Place Student Roost scheme in Belfast, and the new agreement centres on its Woodward facing brick range alongside its Classic and Heathfield collections.

AG Sales Director for Ireland Rodney Davidson said the agreement creates opportunities for closer collaboration on lower embodied carbon solutions, while GRAHAM Head of Strategic Supply Agreements and Procurement Gordon Morrow said AG’s quality, reliability and technical capability made it a natural choice.

The deal puts the manufacturer closer to the point where carbon is decided: UK building embodied carbon emissions are estimated at 64 million tonnes a year, more than aviation and shipping combined, which makes early supplier involvement in specification commercially relevant for contractors.

AG’s Woodward range delivers about 46% less embodied carbon than traditional clay brick, and the company supplied more than £9.3m (€10.9m) of Woodward bricks across the UK and Ireland in 2024, according to Business in the Community’s award profile.

Nelson Place, one of the schemes AG supplied, is Belfast’s largest student accommodation building with 774 rooms, which gives a sense of the scale of project this supply relationship already serves.

For the sector, preferred supplier frameworks that bring manufacturers into design and specification early are becoming a practical route to lower embodied carbon, because product data such as verified environmental declarations can shape material choices before they are fixed.

Source: The Irish News / CIBSE Journal / Business in the Community / Specify Magazine