Colorful job shop shines: it is an impressive thing to see a very large job shop coater running high volume, high quality products on a three-shift basis and delivering finished product within one week of the customer order.(DuPont Powder Coatings)(Aralco Ventilation Technology)(Company Profile)

On a recent trip to Europe with the DuPont Powder Coatings Star Coaters Study Tour (to read about the visit, see my Editor's View on page 4 of the January 2006 issue of Industrial Paint & Powder), one of the facilities the group visited was the large job shop, Colors NV. It turns out that Colors is a perfect name for the company as it has applied more than 800 different colors and employees never know what new designer look the architect is going to ask for from one week to the next.

Colors NV was established in Hamme (East Flanders), near Antwerp, Belgium, in 1987 as a subsidiary of Aralco Ventilation Technology. Aralco manufactures a line of unique ventilation devices that are powder coated by Colors. The ventilation system is part of a window frame that offers a range of decorator colors. They were so successful in providing high quality and color variety that other businesses expressed an interest in having their products powder coated at Colors, and so they began to take in outside work.

In 2001, Colors became part of the Aliplast Group, one the largest suppliers of coated aluminum extrusion in the world. The company moved to a new location and built three new powder coating systems to handle the large volume of product coming from Aralco and its other customers. In January 2005, the management of Colors bought the company from Aliplast and became independent to provide better services to a larger group of …