Explore how Volution Group is embracing sustainable practices amid impressive global growth
With a mission to provide healthy indoor air in a sustainable manner, Volution Group plc (Volution) is a leading supplier of ventilation products with primary markets in the UK, Europe, and Australasia. Under its several brand names, the company is committed to enhancing customer experiences of ventilation by reducing energy consumption and improving indoor air quality and comfort.
Across its portfolio of brands, Volution provides ventilation for well-insulated and airtight buildings in both residential and commercial markets, with its revenue split across 27 percent commercial and 73 percent residential. Residential products encompass a broad range of solutions designed to suit a variety of budgets and applications, ranging from unitary extractor fans for use in kitchens and bathrooms to significantly higher-value, low-carbon ventilation systems with heat recovery. 
Volution’s commercial ventilation offering, on the other hand, includes a variety of extractor fans, as well as mechanical heat recovery units, air handling units, fan coils, and hybrid ventilation solutions. The mechanical heat recovery units include both ‘fixed volume’ and ‘demand’ systems, some of which also incorporate high efficiency counter-flow heat recovery cells for energy efficiency.
Established in 2002, the business has grown significantly since its inception, and it became a listed company in 2014 with its shares traded on the premium segment of the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Alongside organic growth, Volution has acquired numerous businesses to expand its core ventilation operations both within the UK and across the globe.
The latest acquisition was completed in 2024, with the addition of Fantech, an industry leader in fans and acoustic technology. With a strong position in Australia and New Zealand, this acquisition will add innovative solutions to Volution’s portfolio and consolidate the company’s market presence in these geographies.
To learn more about the evolution of Volution and its recent acquisition, CEO Ronnie George sits down with Manufacturing Today to share the company’s story from his perspective. Having joined the business as the Managing Director of one of Volution’s brands in 2008, Ronnie has seen the group transform from a UK-centric entity to a globally diversified organization with 22 brands in 17 countries. His extensive experience saw Ronnie become CEO in 2012, and he has since led a total of 26 acquisitions alongside supporting organic growth across the globe.
“2024 marked ten years of Volution being listed on the LSE, and over that time, our revenue has grown from £120 million to £348 million,” Ronnie opens. “We’re a rapidly growing player in providing ventilation systems for residential and commercial buildings, and the challenge for us is identifying how to best support such growth from a manufacturing perspective.
“For both residential and commercial ventilation, there are two types of installation: existing applications and new build applications. For existing homes, we’re typically offering a replacement solution with much lower energy consuming motors, and some of our solutions reduce energy consumption by as much as 90 percent compared to the existing system. A topical conversation around ventilation is the amount of heat exhausted into the atmosphere, so we’re now developing integrated solutions that are not only more energy efficient but help with heat recovery.
“When it comes to newly built housing, there are regulations around elevated standards of insulation and air quality, especially in the UK. We’re seeing rapid growth in heat recovery ventilation for newly built homes and we estimate that around 30-to-40 percent of all new homes in the UK are built with either heat recovery or continuous system ventilation. This trend will inevitably continue to penetrate new construction in line with the push for decarbonization around the world.”
It’s clear that sustainability has been a key driver for Volution in recent years, but we’re keen to hear more about the company’s initiatives and solutions. “As most of our products are made from plastics, we’ve been on a mission to increase the amount of recycled content,” Ronnie explains. “Many of our products are injection molded plastic and we started to challenge ourselves around how we could apply recycled polymers to the process rather than just virgin polymers. It wasn’t an easy process, as our products must have certain mechanical and fire-resistant properties, but over the last five years, we’ve worked with partners like Ultra Polymers to access recycled materials.
“Ultra Polymers work with AO.com, who offer a recovery service collecting customers’ old appliances. Once broken down into constituent parts, Ultra Polymers process the material into a form we can then utilize in our own facility to create injection molded parts. As a result, around 78 percent of the plastic we process in our facilities today is recycled, but we’re continuously pushing this further to reach our target of 90 percent in the coming years. We’ve made significant investments in our own facilities to test each batch of materials when they arrive to ensure the recycled content doesn’t impact on the overall product quality.
“We’re also committed to developing products that are low carbon,” he adds. “In fact, just over 70 percent of our revenue last year was generated from products we consider to be low carbon solutions. As we’ve discussed in relation to new build housing, these products are not only more energy efficient but also include heat recovery capabilities.”
Turning to the acquisition of Fantech, Ronnie continues: “We were in talks with the owner of Fantech for several years before we completed the acquisition in December 2024. Fantech is a great business with an excellent, high-quality management team in place. With an annual revenue of around 160 million Australian dollars, this was our largest acquisition to date and will bring us an additional 350 colleagues.
Success factors
“Fantech has extensive national coverage for both residential and commercial ventilation products across Australia and New Zealand, which will enable us to provide our customers with local inventory and support. We’re in the process of integrating Fantech with the wider group as part of our well-established 200-day integration program that we’ve developed through experience of other acquisitions.
“The 200-day plan involves all key stakeholders and maps out each stage of the integration, as well as any challenges and what we hope to achieve. We’ve completed the rudimentary tasks and we’re currently reviewing the synergies and opportunities across the group. However, as Fantech already has strong local management, the process will be complete within the 200-day period, and we view our role in the acquisition as being a supportive owner that helps Fantech continue to flourish.”
Aside from acquisitions, Volution is continuously investing in its manufacturing to add new capabilities and streamline processes. “We’ve developed our own scheduling system within our ERP system to collect real-time data and subsequently enhance efficiency,” Ronnie elaborates.
“We’ve also invested around 1.5 million in our West Midlands facility over the last 18 months to enable lights-out laser cutting operations. But we’re not stopping yet; we will continue to invest in manufacturing and injection molding to support overall growth.”
With continuous investment on the cards, we ask Ronnie what the future holds for Volution. “We’re about halfway through our financial year, but 2025 will see us continue to engage employees as we continue to grow,” he says. “I believe we’ve got a great model, and we’re constantly evaluating the factors that underpin that success. We’re building momentum around providing customers with healthy air, and we’ll continue to provide great products that improve indoor air quality and make a positive difference to the users’ experience.
“If we can maintain our three-to-five percent organic growth rate and add further acquisitions by deploying capital across the UK, Europe, and Australasia, there’s no reason why we can’t continue our trajectory of doubling the size of the business roughly every five-to-six years,” Ronnie concludes. “I’m a big advocate for employee development and internal promotion, so we’re creating a cohort of senior middle managers through our management development program, which will help us to retain the strong track record we’ve earned over the last ten years since becoming a listed company.”