A Busy Start to the Year for QUALICOAT
QUALICOAT Members
The first meeting of members of the Association was held in February with an excellent presence at the meeting with only a couple of members joining via a conference connection. Growth of the Association continues apace with PPG joining earlier in the year and a further three architectural powder coaters close to being approved for membership by being offered a QUALICOAT licence.
Chair, Angus Mackie of Vertik-Al opened the meeting by welcoming everyone to what was the largest meeting since the outbreak of Covid. After the formalities of approving the minutes of the previous meeting and discussing the Association financial position, business turned to the marketing and education of the QUALICOAT Specification.
QUALICOAT are delighted to announce that they will be taking a stand at the London ZAK Facades conference being held on the 8th November at the Hilton, Park Lane. The aim is to assist specifiers in understand the benefits of specifying QUALICOAT powder coating for all architectural aluminium.
Together with a recently updated website the Association is now increasing its activity on LinkedIn and Twitter with a view to extending its educational reach across the fenestration supply chain. The Association RIBA CPD is also being updated with a view to having this available on video demand, by video conference, or by in person presentation. More
information will be available on the Association website in the coming months.
Training was discussed and options outlined of how to increase awareness of the specification across the QUALICOAT supply chain, to include all members. Whilst the Association runs yearly training courses for the Laboratory Technicians in coating members, the next planned for the November, it was agreed that the Association should review other personnel who are key in ensuring the specification is upheld.
On reviewing technical issues, 2021 statistics from the Association have recently been released. Pretreatment systems used globally by coating members are now split as follows, 77% use a chrome-free system, 20.5% still use a chrome based system and a growing number, 2.5% now use a pre-anodising system. A total of 68% of the membership are now licensed to coat to seaside class. It should be noted here that the use of Chrome based systems in the UK & EU will be banned in 2024.
It was felt that there is still some confusion in the fenestration supply chain regarding the importance of specifying gloss levels and the retention of colour. It was agreed that this would form the basis of a future editorial which would be aimed at specifiers.
As pre-anodising used as a pretreatment continues to grow, a new appendix IV will be added to the QUALICOAT Specification in July 2023. This new appendix will cover the requirements for pre-anodising and powder coating to be completed between anodising company and powder coater. The new appendix should help make the pre-anodising option more readily available across the UK & Ireland.
The next meeting was agreed to take place at QUALICOAT Member Architectural Metal Systems in Cork, Ireland in June.
All QUALICOAT UK & Ireland members are available to offer advise and can be found on the Association website at qualicoatuki.org