By Chris Mansfield – QUALICOAT Chair
With over fifty delegates attending in person and online from our membership, our recent QUALICOAT UK & Ireland Association meeting held in Dublin offered an excellent opportunity to connect with industry peers in a productive and inspiring setting. Held at The Samuel Hotel in the heart of the city, the event combined insightful presentations with collaborative discussions, all set against the backdrop of Dublin’s renowned hospitality. The venue provided a professional yet welcoming atmosphere, while the central location made it easy for members to attend from across the UK and Ireland.
Over the last few years the coating membership of the Association has grown significantly to include all the major and medium sized powder coaters across the UK & Ireland. The technical focused meeting of association member companies provides significant value by fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, and innovation within a focused professional community. It allows participants to discuss common challenges, benchmark best practices, and stay up to date with evolving standards, technologies, and regulatory requirements. By bringing together our members, experts with shared goals, these meetings encourage constructive dialogue, strengthen industry relationships, and lead to more consistent and effective powder coating technology within the QUALICOAT Specification.
The meeting started at 09:00 and after introductory matters of the meeting were concluded, Coby Armar, General Secretary of QUALICOAT global, offered members an update on the Association’s new quality label which is accompanied by the tagline “Inspired by architects, trusted by professionals”. The Association, based in Zurich currently has eight general licensees, QUALICOAT UK & Ireland being one, these GL’s offer regional support to members and arrange the regular third party inspections of members. The intention of QUALICOAT is to increase the number of GL’s across the globe as the Association continues to grow. In order to support construction specifiers, the Association is aiming to offer presentations at the ‘architect@work’ events in London and Berlin, and the Zak World of Facades in London, Brazil and Singapore.
The Association global membership currently comprises of membership from powder coating companies, powder systems manufacturers and pre-treatment systems suppliers. With the development of QUALICOAT 3.0 and the research that has gone into the aluminium substrate composition, the Association is looking to introduce extruders into membership. This move will see the tightening of the composition and processing of recycled aluminium extrusions to further enhance life expectancy of the applied powder coatings.
Membership of the UK & Ireland association continues to grow with Sure Powder Coatings recently gaining their licence. This now takes the coaters membership in the UK to thirty with a further three coating companies who are likely to gain their licences this year. The ‘Seaside’ endorsement that members can additionally add to their licence offers a more robust pre-treatment process that is required when a project is within 5Km of the coastline. This endorsement is being sought by more members, currently there are 19 coating members who carry this endorsement which is a testament to the quality of coatings that our members want to supply.
Training of the continuous process management and regular testing of production samples is key to the quality behind the QUALICOAT label. In mid-July we are holding two days of training for members Laboratory Technicians, the first day will be for new members and technicians and the second day will be for more experienced technicians. All Laboratory Technicians must attend a training day at least once every two years, this is a requirement of the QUALICOAT licence.
As the Association grows, currently fifty-three members in total, so does the management of the day to day matters of specification enquiries and membership related issues. To help with the management of our UK & Ireland Association and set its course for future growth, the Association now formally invites members to join a board of governors. The intention will be to have a board meeting prior to Member’s meetings so that matters can be voted on and adopted by the Membership.
The next Members meeting of the Association is to be held at Bragborough Hall on 16th October where the meeting will be followed by the Association AGM.
Should you wish to attend a members meeting and apply for membership of QUALICOAT please get in touch. All QUALICOAT UK & Ireland members are available to offer advice and can be found on the Association website at qualicoatuki.org
