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Discuss My first (and probably only) post. Why does tile adhesive cost so much? in the UK Tiling Forum area at TilersForums.com.

M

Mike Mike

I live in Sweden, and here a flexible S1 adhesive can cost between £1 and £2 per KG!

I've looked at the U.K. prices and they're definitely cheaper, but still vary a great deal between sellers, and are still around £0.50 - 0.85 per kilo.

So, being that it's Sunday night, and Swedish TV is even worse than that dreadful Channel 4 programme "You Deserve This House", I started looking on Alibaba.

Ignoring the 3rd world manufacturers, I stumbled across a bunch of Spanish tile adhesive and grout manufacturers. Never heard of them, never used their products, but assume that as Spain knows a thing or two about tiles and tiling, and that the products are certified to EU classification standards (C1, C2 etc) and the companies are ISO9001 certified, that maybe they work.

None of them quoted prices, you'd need to contact them and then initiate a dialogue.

However, there was a Spanish WHOLESALER who was offering C1 adhesive for 2 EURO's for 20kg bags, and C2TE S1 flexible adhesive for 6 EUROs a bag (min order qty 1 container, 20 tonnes). Manufactured by Spanish companies.

So why exactly do we pay so much for Italian (Mapei), British (BAL), Danish (Alfix, LIP), Finnish (Kiilto), French (Bostik) adhesive?

There was a separate post on here today about fuel prices, which prompted me to Google search the world's cheapest country for petrol. It is Venezuela at 2 pence per litre. 2 pence. What are you paying? £1.40 ish? What's more, Venezuela doesn't refine it's own petrol, it exports crude to the U.S., which refines it and exports it back, and they can STILL sell it to their citizens for 2 PENCE a litre, and the oil companies can still post billions in profits!

You and I pay SEVENTY TIMES MORE for ours.

And the country with the highest petrol prices in the world? NORWAY! That wonderful country who's only real source of income, apart from pilchards, is North Sea oil, charges £1.64 per litre for petrol. Or, 82 times more than Venezuela.

I have no idea what it all means, but I'm not happy about it.

Who's with me?
 
H

hillhead

It's bad for sure, I paid £559 for 900 litres of kero for my heating system last week. Diesel is going to go above £1.50 a litre asap, I was having a drink with an local oil co owner this evening. Them lads take no hurt.
 
T

tileunique

Heres the thing, long black wig-like a witch, stick on moustache attached to glasses and big eyebrows - like goucho marx- cigar optional, paint your van with black emulsion, fill up at a petrol station and then floor it off the forecourt- wheelspins optional, drive like the clappers to a car wash and wash the black emulsion off the van. hey presto! £100 of fuel for the price of a carwash.
 
P

Peter

The Ribena doesn't cost as much to run the van on, especially round your parts Joe. :lol:
 

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