Sales manager made admission in secretly recorded phone call in the days after the 2017 fire
Arconic continued selling the combustible ACM cladding installed on Grenfell Tower after its test report had been withdrawn because of the “cost implications” of removing it from the market, the inquiry has heard.
Former Arconic sales manager Deborah French made the admission to John Simmons, who worked for one of the firm’s client’s Simco, a week after the fatal fire in June 2017 in a telephone conversation which Simmons secretly recorded.
Simmons had asked French why Arconic had not withdrawn its Reynobond PE panels, which were used as part of Grenfell Tower’s refurbishment, as rival firm 3A had done with its similar Alucobond product.
French replied: “There were some discussions around when Alucobond did do that and it was… it was the cost implications.”
她补充称，她曾建议Arconic撤回这些电池板，但“这与我们不希望市场上出现两种产品这一事实更有关系”。
Arconic公司当时出售两种版本的雷诺邦德。一种是阻燃剂，称为FR，它含有70%的矿物芯，另一种叫PE，它有聚乙烯芯，便宜但易燃。
Thursday’s hearing was told that Arconic’s margin on FR was around €5-€6, but was €7-€8 on the far more popular PE.
French said that she remembered having discussions with a colleague about whether Arconic would follow 3A’s lead and withdraw Reynobond PE from the market but was told that “we would continue as we were”.
当律师向RIchard Millett QC询问她的“成本影响”时，French回答说:“事实是，我们必须以更昂贵的价格供应FR。”
Millet then asked: “Do you recall whether, in considering those commercial considerations, any consideration was given to the fire safety consequences of continuing to sell Reynobond PE?”
French replied: “I don’t recall any conversations of that nature.”
Earlier in the recorded telephone conversation, Simmons told French that Reynobond had “gone up like a fucking bonfire” when ignited.
Simmons said: “Just to let you know we set fire to a piece of stack next to a piece of Reynobond the Reynobond goes up like a fucking bonfire, the stack does withstand it.”
He did not clarify which version of Reynobond had been ignited.
In February, French was sent a test report of Reynobond PE which showed that it had been downgraded to the Euroclasss E rating.
It had previously been classed as Euroclass B in a 2008 test report, which the British Board of Agrement had used as the basis for giving the product the UK class 0 rating, which marked it as safe for use on buildings over 18m in height.
Asked by Simmons in the phone conversation why Arconic had not made this public, French said it was because she thought the firm was challenging the testing of it and that they were also looking at developing a different colour core.
But she added: “There was a lot of stuff in terms of development that they didn’t share with any of us. [They] are very secret over stuff like that”.
弗兰奇于2015年离开Arconic，她还告诉调查小组，她没有就雷诺邦德PE的消防评级被下调一事警告她的继任者文斯·米金斯。
Millet asked: “Vince Meakins had taken over your role at Reynobond; did you not seek to tell Vince Meakins to warn Harley and warn those on the Grenfell Tower project that you had supplied Reynobond with a PE core which in fact did not have class B but class E?”
French replied that she did not, and when asked by Millet why that was, she replied: “I don’t know, I’d moved on and I didn’t think in that way.”
Phase one of the inquiry into the Grenfell disaster that killed 72 people found that the cladding installed on Grenfell Tower was the “primary cause” of the spread of the fire.
The inquiry continues.
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