RB Farquhar Bathroom Pods, a Scottish manufacturer of prefabricated bathroom pods, will be making its debut at the Big 5 show this year in an attempt to tap the Middle East market and create awareness of its innovative bathroom concept in the region.

The company, which in recent years has grown to become the European market leader in this fast-growing sector of the international construction market, also has plans to set up a new bathroom pod manufacturing operations in Dubai in the UAE next year.
“We already have clients who are active in the Gulf countries, and we believe our decades of experience in the design and manufacture of this efficient, time-saving concept will enable us to replicate our European success in this thriving new market,” says Michael Shand, managing director of RB Farquhar Bathroom Pods.
“We have identified the UAE and Saudi hotel markets in particular as having outstanding potential for the successful introduction of bathroom pods, and we are planning to take our first steps into the Gulf by exhibiting at the huge Big 5 trade exhibition in Dubai,” he says.
“Prefabricated bathroom pods are energy-effective to produce, eliminate traditional on-site problems like damage and theft, and offer developers the huge comfort of guaranteed production and delivery schedules,” he adds.
RB Farquhar Bathroom Pods is one of the UK pioneers behind the concept of prefabricating bathrooms off-site in quality-controlled factory conditions. The company produced high-specification executive washrooms for a number of prestigious commercial London developments during the 1980s, including Canary Wharf, and successfully pioneered high-volume bathroom prefabrication for the UK and Irish hotel markets in 1990.
Prefabricated bathroom pods are particularly effective in construction projects with a high level of bathroom or shower-room repetition, most notably hotels, student accommodation and high-rise executive apartments.
“By assembling the bathrooms in quality-controlled factory conditions which comply in full with British Standards for both design and manufacturing, RB Farquhar Bathroom Pods offers improved quality of finish, elimination of product waste, cost-savings, reduced reliance on on-site labour and accelerated occupancy. The bathroom pods are fully plumbed, tiled, wired and pressure-tested before they leave the assembly plant, making on-site installation a quick and simple operation,” Shand says.
RB Farquhar’s pods feature luxury sanitary ware and brassware components from leading European manufacturers such as Porcelanosa, Villeroy & Boch, Ideal Standard and Hans Grohe, and all design and manufacturing operations are fully accredited to BS EN ISO 9001, he says. The company is a preferred long-term supplier to leading European hotel chains and construction companies, such as Travelodge, Express by Holiday Inn, Ramada, Radisson, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Laing O’Rourke, Balfour Beatty, Bovis and Multiplex.
In 2003, RB Farquhar Bathroom Pods moved its European bathroom pod production operations from Scotland to a custom-built assembly plant in Chomutov, in the Czech Republic, which has a production capacity of around 10,000 pods per year, with one new bathroom pod coming off the assembly lines every 15 minutes.
“With the ultra-fast successful commissioning of our Czech plant, we have demonstrated our ability to recruit and train up local assembly workers who are capable of quickly meeting our very high standards of supervised production,” points out Shand.
Prefabricated bathroom pods are increasingly popular in many sectors of the European construction market, including hotels, city-centre executive residential developments, student, key worker and military accommodation. With majority of their customers coming from construction, education, industry or the events market, the company has the ability to supply units for temporary offices, classrooms, welfare, toilet or storage accommodation, among others.
RB Farquhar Manufacturing is part of RB Farquhar Holdings, which also includes RB Farquhar Hires, one of the UK’s leading suppliers of temporary accommodation.
The company’s stand 2C75 is at the British Pavilion at the Big 5.