I was summoned to a hotel near Heathrow airport recently for what turned out to be a revealing chat with Jan Klomp, group md of Chinese bathroom giant Imperial. As an industry veteran with a keen appreciation of the global market, Klomp was about to fly back to his home in southern China after a short visit to Impulse Bathrooms, the company's Birmingham-based distribution arm. However, there was something clearly bugging him, and he wasted no time in explaining what it was.

"It's one of my pet hates that nobody looks at product standards over here," he told me. "Nobody cares. You sell everything here. We're still being fed by sub-standard untested product. It's coming in from China, but that's partly the fault of the local UK market. There's no check at the entry point."

Klomp has travelled widely throughout his career and claims standards in the UK are about as low as you can get.

As far as he's concerned, we've become little more than a dumping ground for the kind of rubbish that nobody else will accept. That's apart from New Zealand and South Africa apparently whose standards are equally questionable.

What Klomp would like to see are regulations as tight as those in Australia, where until two years ago he was running a successful kitchen franchise. Over there, he told me, you simply can't sell a product that's sub-standard.

It has to comply with quality levels. The plumber has to sign it off and guarantee it for five years and there isn't a plumber in Australia who'll sign off a sub-standard product because if something goes wrong it's at his expense.
Klomp's main gripe with all this is that it destroys price levels. "There's nothing to stop them," he explained.

Nobody asks for a test certificate. Our product complies, but we've tested products from other suppliers and not one passed on water absorption so they just dump it into countries with low enforcement levels. I'm left in a position where I can't say, 'my product complies therefore yours should'."

So does he have a point? And if so, what can be done about it? In truth, Klomp doesn't have a solid answer, but insists he's doing his damndest to raise awareness of the issue. "Why aren't manufacturers jumping up and down and saying, 'this is unacceptable?' he asks me. "We need some form of authority. CE quality control doesn't tell me anything about the quality of the china, or about flush performance. There has to be an industry council that gets a grip on what comes into the country and what's being sold. We need a forum or to create our own label - a standard within the manufacturers so that Chinese people who don't comply can't use that trade mark."

So is this a workable solution? Can manufacturers be expected to get their heads together on this and come up with new and improved standards? Is there enough determination among the great and good of the bathroom industry? Or will we continue to be a handy dumping ground for rejected product?

You can read my full interview with Jan Klomp in the July issue of kbbreview.

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