march 2007
Qualicoat is a powder coating standard for architectural aluminium which is now widely available in the UK. Commonplace across Europe since 1986 and a well known quality standard, the UK’s specifiers are now adopting the standard, as it not only offers an exceptional quality finish, but is also independently tested by a UK testing house. Qualicoat members agree to pre-finish and apply powder coatings to a minimum standard using a wide range of materials from various manufacturers. The standard also meets and exceeds the latest British Standard for architectural powder coatings, BS EN 12206-1:2004.
The Bodycote Testing group is broad based testing company active worldwide with 53 laboratories, all of which are BS EN ISO 17025 approved. Bodycote Salford have recently relocated to a purpose built, state of the art laboratory in Eccles and is a centre of excellence for all coating testing including architectural finishes. Once members samples have tested and approved for license, the member can use the Qualicoat logo on all their market communication. Independent testing does not finish there, as member companies are inspected by Bodycote up to five times a year. These routine inspections are carried out without prior agreement and cover the whole powder coat process including test samples.
Huub Sips of Bodycote comments, “I have been working with Qualicoat in the UK since January 2001 when the association was set up and we have formed a close working relationship with member companies. I am convinced that the Qualicoat standard offers customers consistent quality and I recommend that all powder coaters in the UK should become involved.”
Qualicoat recognises the need for consistent quality in today’s architectural finishes, as failure of finishes on facade elements is quite easy to determine but can be very expensive to resolve. Remedial work can be completed with local refinishing on site for minor failures, with complete replacement for more serious failures. Use of a Qualicoat licensed applicator minimises the risk of failure without incurring additional costs so all projects should be specified as applied by a Qualicoat approved company.
