But we are going to need to see some more laminate capacity being added so. Our approach has been pretty constant view over the last year or so to continue to go into each one of our facilities and find opportunities to unlock trap capacity to increase efficiencies and we’ve been doing that pretty steadily. And so we’ve been able to increase our laminate production over the last 12 months pretty dramatically. And we’re seeing that in some of the growth we’re in our mix shift, we’re seeing in the roofing business today. We announced a new laminator for our Medina plant that really services the Midwest. I think the other thing to keep in mind in roofing is that it’s more of a regional business. This product doesn’t travel long distances. So a lot of the capacity adds are going to be in regions that we see growth, regions where we see continuous laminate conversion and growth opportunities.
And so that’s what’s driving our investment decisions to try to increase the lam capacity to maintain our position in the market.
Todd Fister: I’ll give a bit of context on the North America Residential business as well. Right now we view utilization rates as being very healthy for the industry. When we look at September’s data on starts and completions and permits, as well as where this year is landing on a leg starts basis, we’re in this range of about 1.4 million starts in the U.S. We’ve shared before, we think the industry has capacity to serve a market in the range of 1.4 million to 1.5 million starts. And I’d say that’s inclusive of some of the announced capacity moves by competitors into 2024. As Brian shared for roofing, it’s a similar story for North America Residential. We’re very much focused on how we leverage process innovations and productivity work to unlock trap capacity from our existing assets. We’ve had good success with that. The last few years we continue to focus on that is the most efficient and highest return source of capacity for us going forward.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question today is from Kathryn Thompson from Thompson Research Group. Kathryn, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Kathryn Thompson: Hi, thank you for taking my question today. A lot of focus on the commercial, non-res end market. And the question today, as you look across your major operating segments, both in the U.S and Europe, could you give color in terms of where you see the commercial? What is working? What isn’t working? And how that colors your view over the next 3 to 9 months? Thank you.
Brian Chambers: Thanks, Kathryn. Well, let me start by giving some context on our markets outside of North America. And then I can come back to North America. And I’ll start with Europe. In Europe, it’s important to understand the — both last year 2022 as well as this year. We were off to a really good start last year and Europe really strong market conditions in Q1 and even into Q2, before we started to see the impact of energy and inflation. And then more recently, interest rates impact construction activity in Europe. So as we said now, we’ve been sequentially pretty stable in terms of European demand, it’s stable off of a low level, but it is stable from Q2 into Q3. And then we expect that stability, again, from Q3 into Q4, we continue to see good activity in Europe in certain end markets, particular for our film glass business, we’ve had good demand for LNG and that sort of a global phenomenon.
But Europe, we see good stability into Q4. But then we need the economies in Europe to really sort through inflation and interest rates and perhaps also Ukraine, for us to see a return to where we were in the first half of last year. Likewise, Asia is a very similar story. We are seeing weak end market demand broadly in our Asia business for Insulation. North America has real bright spots. When we look at North America activity for manufacturing construction, when we look at some of the larger projects, and again, LNG that we saw quite a bit of our film glass business into, we are seeing good activity in pockets of commercial in North America. We’re seeing stability in other pockets. And as you would expect, in smaller pieces of our business like office buildings, we are seeing some weakness.
So overall, as we look forward, certainly for fourth quarter, we expect stability in our commercial business. And then we’ll discuss 2024 more as we get into the February call.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Adam Baumgarten from Zelman Associates. Adam, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Adam Baumgarten: Hey, good morning. Just on Roofing, I was just curious what kind of demand trends you’re seeing in the non-storm impacted markets at this point?
Brian Chambers: Yes. Thanks, Adam. I think when we look across the U.S., most regions of the country have been impacted in some form or fashion by some increased storm activity. I’d say the regions that probably stand out is — the least impacted would be the kind of the Pacific Northwest and then the Northeast. There, we’ve not seen that kind of storm demand and volatility in terms of increase in demand. And I’d say that the remodeling and R&R activity has been steady. Again, a big part of our offering is a repair replacement model, and we still see those demand trends pretty solid. So I think as we look through the incremental storm band to your question as well, I think we see fundamentally underlying still good, strong repair remodeling activity going on across the roofing business.
Now again, it’s been accelerated through a lot of incremental storm demand. But I think the fundamentals are still pretty solid. And then a smaller part of the business is tied to new construction. We actually think going into 2024, that becomes more of a tailwind because we do think housing starts are going to continue to grow. So while I think the storm activity is carrying a lot of the headlines this year, and it is at an extremely high-level, multiyear high. We think that’s going to carry on into next year. We are still seeing good repair replacement activity in those non-impacted regions.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question today comes from Sam Reid from Wells Fargo. Sam, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Sam Reid: Awesome. Thanks so much guys for taking my question. Quick one on Insulation. You guys have been calling out favorable mix now for several quarters, and it looks like that continued this quarter in Insulation. Just curious as to how sustainable you think those mix benefits could be? And then maybe could you break out some of the mix tailwinds that you might be seeing on the technical side versus the residential side as well. Thanks.
