The Finish Line

Dallas Cooley is Chief Servant and CEO at Georgia Powder Coating in Gainesville, Georgia, a company approaching its 27th year in business and prepares for a facility expansion that will more than double its footprint.For Georgia Powder Coating, the decision to prioritize customer experience was not based on industry precedent. In fact, there was little to draw from within manufacturing itself.Instead, the company looked outside its own industry for inspiration.“You can think of hotel chains like the Ritz Carlton, or even fast food now with Chick-fil-A,” Cooley says. “They just operate differently with the customer as the focus.”Visit https://www.georgiapowdercoating.com.

Stephen Sharretts is the CEO and third-generation leader of Sharretts Plating in York, Pennsylvania, an electroplating operation that has lasted 100 years and weathered the industry’s many storms.Founded in 1925 as Charles D. Snyder and Son, Inc., the company has evolved from a small polishing and repair shop in Harrisburg into a cutting-edge surface finishing operation serving global industries.Sharretts Plating specializes in alloys and finishes that most finishing operations prefer to ignore for obvious reasons: the difficulty of mastering the processes, and the costs often associated with precious metals. It provides standard copper, tin, nickel, and electroless nickel finishes, and also works extensively with gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, and numerous other precious metals.Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2714-doctors-orders-sharretts-plating-mastering-the-art-of-growing-finishing-business.

Natalia Stephen is owner of Compound Metal Coatings and CEO and Owner of PVD Advanced Technologies, both located in Ontario, Canada, and looks forward to her 25th anniversary in 2026.Stephen founded CMC in 2001, after a career that took her from her birthplace in Romania to college and her first job in South Africa, where she sold chemistry supplies, and eventually to Canada, where she was on the supplier side as well.Along the way, she has become well known for her expertise in corrosion prevention and wear-resistant coatings. She is an active member of various trade associations, including the Canadian Association of Moldmakers (CAMM), of which she recently became chairman.

Marko Duffy is Managing Director at TDF Metal Finishing in Danvers, Massachusetts. He took the job in 2021 after a lengthy career on the supplier side of the finishing business and has transformed the once family-owned company in just a little over four years.Duffy has helped the shop, founded in 1984, become accredited by the National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program and has added new finishing lines and more processes. More importantly, he won over the 30 employees by fostering a culture of accountability and appreciation.Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2645-new-plating-lines-nadcap-take-tdf-metal-finishing-to-next-level

Imran Shamsi is Vice President at Premier Metal Processing in San Diego, which offers anodizing, electrolytic nickel, bright tin, chemfilm, electroless nickel, electropolish, passivation, and zinc to customers across various industries. The company serves customers in the aerospace and defense, medical, electronics, oil and gas, connectors, microwave, nuclear, automotive, and commercial sectors.The diversity of business sectors among Premier Metal Processing’s customers has been a significant benefit to its growth.“We’ve purposely — as well as by luck — diversified so that we’ve always had the benefit of working with multiple industries,” Shamsi says. “We work within the aerospace industry, which is starting to be a little bit more constrictive for us. We do work a lot with parts destined for the Department of Defense, electronics, and semiconductors.”Visit https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/anodizingcat/2629-long-game-helps-plater-premier-metal-processing-sustain-growth to read more about Premier Metal Processing.

Mark Morris is President of J&M Plating in Rockford, Illinois, which is a large fastener coating and small stamping operation. It has 220,000 square feet of production space, offering one-stop finishing services, and is ISO 9001:2015 quality certified. Its heat-treating and plating laboratories are ISO/IEC 17025:2005 accredited for mechanical testing.J&M Plating has been one of the top zinc electroplaters since its founding in 1986, offering heat-treating, dip-spin coating, patching, and sorting as part of its plating processes.Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2609-bolt-action-j-m-plating-grows-fastener-business-by-latching-on-to-core-values

John Cutchin got his start in the finishing industry at 18, when he would bronze baby shoes in his hometown in Easley, South Carolina.Cutchin went on to start Palmetto Plating in 1964 to provide metal finishing services to the textile industries, and has enjoyed a successful career ever since.Read more about him at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2612-legends-john-cutchin-palmetto-plating

Adam Thomas, Vice President of the family-owned company R.J. Thomas Manufacturing. is a Cherokee, Iowa, manufacturer of Pilot Rock park equipment that was founded in 1959.The addition of an upgraded powder coating system has been on R.J. Thomas Manufacturing’s to-do list for some time, and especially since business has been growing for the last several years.The company has been designing and manufacturing the Pilot Rock brand of park, street, and campsite equipment since its inception. The outdoor park equipment includes campfire rings, grills, benches, picnic tables, and trash receptacles, which are used in parks, campgrounds, or someone’s backyard.Read more at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/powder-coat/2585-r-j-thomas-mfgs-new-pilot-rock-powder-coating-system-makes-finishing-a-walk-in-the-woods

Jo’Van Wiggins is the Chief Operations Officer of EMI Quality Plating in Evansville, Indiana, a 50,000-square-foot business that is central to many manufacturing operations in the U.S.EMI specializes in silver, gold, and nickel plating; certified welding inspection; and additional specialty plating processes, including palladium, diamond coatings, low-, mid-, and high-phos nickel, as well as electroless nickel.“We have a lot of choices and options for potential partnerships with different companies,” Wiggins says. “And we are only using about 25,000 square feet, so we're ready to expand and open up. We also have real estate around our facility, so we're able to build on and open up the capacity even more if need be.”Founded in 2005, the company was acquired in 2016, and President Jake Stocks took ownership and rebranded it with a more modern look and vision. The list of industries they serve is as extensive as the number of processes they offer: military defense, medical, automotive, RF/microwave, laser, cellular, consumer electronics, optics, HVAC/refrigeration, computer, aerospace, and telecommunications.Visit https://emiplating.com. 

Since 2017, Doug Orantes and his wife, Loida, have been trying to get Aero Plating in Lancaster, California, off the ground. Still, a miscommunication with local city officials derailed those plans until he was finally able to realize his dream of opening the doors in 2023.“It’s been a long wait,” Orantes says. “But it has been very much worth it.”Today, Aero Plating operates in an 8,500-square-foot facility that is certified to 9001:2015/AS9100D and Nadcap standards for chem-film and passivation applications.https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/conversion/2551-worth-the-wait-aero-plating-comes-online-after-6-years-of-planning

Jim Leidig is the General Manager of Matrix Finishing in Harrington, Delaware.For the last year, Leidig has had the dream job of designing and building — and now running —a hi-tech powder coating operation that would be the envy of any finishing applicator in the land.When it came time to buy the equipment needed to run the 65,000-square-foot facility, it was Leidig’s bosses who insisted that he go high-end on the equipment and supplies he needed. 

Ashley and Jason Hunsaker are owners of HTS Coatings in Madison, Illinois, which offers thermal spray coating for corrosion protection.HTS Coatings is expanding and growing not only as a coating shop but also as a machining and grinding facility. They market themselves as a full-service thermal spray, grinding, machining, and welding facility that specializes in preventing corrosion- and erosion-related wear and in repairing components damaged during operation.Their trademark thermal spray coating, BTHC-0005, is, they say, superior to hard-chrome deposits for corrosion protection.“We know that the chrome replacement is coming,” she says. “And we do believe thermal spray is a viable option.”Read the full article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/liquid-coat/2477-hts-coatings-soar-with-high-velocity-thermal-spray-as-chrome-replacementVisit https://htscoatings.com.

Guillermo Aguilera and Brenda Tapia are owners of Metal Chem in Chatsworth, California, a shop that offers chem film, passivation, anodizing, electroless nickel, zinc, and phosphate conversion on the plating side, as well as Mil-Specs, urethanes, epoxy, and polyester hybrids on the powder coating side, in addition to liquid coatings.Metal Chem also provides conformal coatings for printed circuit board assemblies, potting or encapsulation finishes in filling an electronic assembly, and dry film lubricants, too.Their Nadcap accreditation has enabled them to meet the metal application needs of top technology pioneers in the aerospace, military, and naval industries, resulting in further growth for the company.Visit https://www.metalcheminc.com.

Jeffrey Rubin is President of Testrite, a manufacturer of visual display products located in Hackensack, New Jersey. After decades of wishful thinking about bringing powder coating in-house, in 2025, Jeffrey and his father, Larry, the CEO of Testrite, are finally up and running with their own powder coating line, following years of outsourcing the work to an external shop.Testrite integrates graphics into visual merchandising, communication, and presentation environments, utilizing those graphics to capture attention and convey messages tastefully and effectively.Their customers include some of the world's top retailers and brands. They collaborate with these companies’ visual merchandise and store planning departments, as well as associated digital printers, marketing, logistics, and installation companies, to deliver messages to stores that customers will see and, hopefully, respond to.Visit www.Testrite.com, www.TestriteOEM.com and www.TestriteAluminum.com. 

Park Kersman is President of Lorin Industries, which he purchased from his family in 2006. His grandfather founded the Muskegon, Michigan coil and batch anodizer in 1943, which has over 400,000 square feet of space.Lorin Industries has collaborated with some of the most prestigious names in architecture, design, and construction, and the Michigan company has quickly established a reputation in the architectural market.However, while Lorin Industries has worked diligently on a global scale to establish itself as a leader in the coil anodizing sector, it has recently returned to its roots by installing a new batch anodizing line to enhance its services.Christened in early 2024, it enables Lorin to meet the needs of its current coil-to-coil customers with batch-anodized parts. New customers requiring batch anodizing can now access Lorin’s premier coil anodizing process. Visit https://www.lorin.com.

Gary Burton has spent over 50 years in the metal finishing industry, working on all sides of the spectrum, including as an applicator and with suppliers.Burton returned to his roots in running plating operations when he joined G.W. Lisk in 2010 as a plater and chemist, a role he still holds today.Burton graduated from Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1962 with a degree in industrial chemistry technology and worked at Utility Platers in Kingston, New York, as a Plant Chemist until 1968.

Carl Troiano is owner of Trojan Powder Coating, which has facilities in Florida and New York.He was  recently honored by the Fenestration and Glazing Industry Alliance (FGIA) for over 20 years of service, including many as a committee member of the FGIA Architectural Aluminum Handling, Cleaning, and Maintenance Task Group and now as a member of the Board of Directors.Troiano is also president of the Southeast FGIA in Florida. He concentrates on the hurricane window specifications the municipal building departments write into their codes. He has done this thankless job as a volunteer for the past two decades, but he does it out of necessity to be a voice of the powder coating and finishing community.

We chat with James Lindsay, Ph. D., a retired research engineer from General Motors who has volunteered for numerous surface finishing industry groups over the past several decades.Dr. Lindsay received the National Association for Surface Finishing Presidential Award at the organization’s 2018 Sur/Fin conference for his years of contribution to the finishing industry and to the various organizations that support the industry.Dr. Lindsay was honored for his many years of service to the NASF and AESF as technical editor of their scientific papers and research. He was previously editor of the NASF’s in-house publications and worked for General Motors until retiring from the company.In his career with the company, Dr. Lindsay was involved with process engineering (production electroplating, die-casting, and heat-treating) at the world's largest decorative plating facility, the Ternstedt Division of GM in Flint, MI.  Then, in 1969, he accepted a research position as a technical staff member at Bell Laboratories, where he worked on developing coating processes in sputtering and vacuum deposition for novel electrical contact surfaces.

We had a chance to talk with Bob Bertelsen, owner of A Plus Powder Coaters in Northeast Ohio.When Bertelsen began A Plus Powder Coaters, he envisioned a simple production shop with possibly a conveyor line and a batch system. The company's growth has even impressed him.“I thought maybe eventually do media blasting, a handful of people, and I envisioned it getting to maybe 40,000 square feet with 20 to 25 employees; just a nice size for a shop,” Bertelsen says.Today, that 95,000-square-foot operation—and soon—to—be larger footprint—runs three shifts a day and employs 72 people. This is more than Bertelsen ever thought possible when he started the company, but you could say he was “driven” to succeed.

Keshav Kumar is owner of Plateronics Processing in Chatsworth, California, which offers anodizing, chem film passivation, electroless nickel, and various other plating substrates, including gold, silver, tin, and zinc.Kumar purchased the company five years ago because of its diversity in application processes. ”We have tried to stick into the more technologically advanced areas where we can add more value to our customer rather than going after bigger volume,” he says.For example, a typical part of the aerospace giant Boeing might undergo four or five finishing processes. Kumar says this makes Plateronics Processing the perfect partner for many aerospace manufacturers who need various finishes on their components.“ What we have seen is if you want to do quality and complicated work, the one finishing process may not cut the deal,” he says. “ If you have one process, you can't win it.”

Alex Budd was offered a job in metal finishing while completing his MBA six years ago, and he realized it might be his calling.“I had always been interested in industries that are under the radar that you just don't think about,” says Budd, now the owner of the shop he went to work for, Greensboro Industrial Platers, having bought it six years ago from the woman who hired him. “This was perfect. You don't realize how every metal you see is coated in or treated. And it just fascinated me.”But if you think owning a plating shop at 24 is daunting, realize that Budd took another monumental leap when he recently acquired crosstown rival United Metal Finishing and merged the two companies.Expanding his company's services and capacity was at the deal's heart. Read the full article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2367-acquisition-helps-greensboro-industrial-platers-grow-footprint

We talk with Elite Metal Finishing's Steve Allen about his challenge of getting the Oceanside, California, shop to attain Nadcap accreditation in chemical processing. In the finishing industry, this effort is not for the faint of heart, especially for someone relatively new.“ I knew this was going to be a huge challenge,” says Allen, who started at Elite in 2022 after working four years at Tech Plate in Orange, California, a company owned by one of his best friend’s father.The decision was made to pursue Nadcap—National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program—accreditation in 2023. In late 2024, Elite earned the chemical processing certification after many months of blood, sweat, and tears and following rigorous planning steps.

We talked with Joe Zabielski from Ronatec about the new Paladin high-phos electroless nickel chemistry, which the company says offers outstanding corrosion protection and hardness.Zabielski says Paladin has passed salt spray tests up to 7500 hours and has plated hardness equivalent to mid-phos baths.“Paladin is a novel high-phosphorus, electroless nickel process developed to address two key issues when using EN as a coating,” he says. “First and foremost, it is highly corrosion resistant. We have measured salt spray performance over 4130 steel panels past 7,500 hours. That is exceptional as a standard high-phosphate is generally known to plate between 500 to 1,000 hours of salt spray resistance.”

We chatted with Dan Zinman from Miles Chemical on various topics about surface finishing.One topic is product availability that seems to be a big concern for many finishers, as well as just-in-time delivery, removing material from their floor, or an emergency when a tank is down. We also discussed how shops are asking for more local presence with their suppliers, such as customer service issues, account management, technical support, and customer service lab help.

We had the chance to have an extended talk with Matt Lindstedt, President of Advanced Plating Technology in Milwaukee, about how the 2009 decision to reconfigure how the Milwaukee-based plating company worked with its customers and end OEMs has changed their company.“Those were hard years because you didn't know if what we were doing was working,” says Lindstedt, who succeeded his father, John, as president of the company. His brother, James, works alongside him as the Vice President of Engineering.

Not every offspring of a surface finishing company owner is destined to follow in their parent’s footsteps, work their way onto the shop floor, and eventually sit in an executive’s chair.For Ross Henry of ChromeTech in Franklin, Wisconsin, following in those footsteps would have meant unlacing his ice skates and chucking his Bauer stick, but a potential hockey career staved that off for some time.“I’ve been away from home playing on youth teams in other states since I was a teenager,” says Henry, Vice President of Operations at the company owned by his father and mother, Alan and Vickie Henry.“I worked in the shop as a kid polishing parts and doing other things that needed to be done, but there seemed to be something else out there for me,” Ross says. “Eventually, I found my way back home.”

We chat with Kandarp Patel, who purchased Somerville Plating in Melrose Park, Illinois in mid-2024 Somerville Plating is a Nadcap-certified operation with over 44 years in the finishing industry.“We were looking for something in manufacturing, and we realized that a lot of it has been moving around because of the competitive risks of moving it to Mexico and China,” Patel says. “However, plating is a very local business, and it seemed that this business is always needed for the local industry, and there's never a risk of outsourcing that.”Patel and Shalin Amin purchased the shop from Randy Hauslein, who bought the former E.J. Somerville Co. in Chicago in 1990 and moved it to Melrose Park. Hauslein was the plant manager at the company from 1982 to 1992; before that, he worked with Hausner Hard Chrome.Hauslein has stayed on as Director of Quality Control, and his wife, Lori Hauslein, remains the Head Of Operations for Somerville Plating as Patel and his business partner, Amin, get to know the business better.Visit https://www.somervilleplating.com.

Judy Runge’s metallurgical engineer and surface finishing expert career spans almost 40 years in industrial, government, and academic professional settings.She worked at Northrop’s Defense Systems Division, Taussig Associates, Inc., Saporito Plating, Argonne National Laboratory, and recently retired as a Principal Engineer for Surface Finishing at Apple. Dr. Runge still maintains her consulting company, CompCote International, where she works with OEMs and finishing operations on various processes, product development and failure analysis.In 2018, she authored The Metallurgy of Anodizing Aluminum, published by Springer Nature, one of the foremost publications on all facets of the anodizing process.We  spoke with Dr. Runge about her career, her work at Northrop and Apple, and her ongoing anodizing consulting work.

Mike Petrey is Plant Manager at powder coater Prism Technologies in Redford, Michigan, which was founded in 1997 as a small family company with two employees and 2,500 square feet. The founder, Eric Felton Sr., had a history with powder manufacturing and quality control with Glidden paints. He branched into consulting and assisted in powder line set-ups and troubleshooting all over the country, Petrey says.Today, his son, Eric Jr., owns the facility with six spray booths, one conveyor line, three batch ovens, and one line oven. Most of their work is in the automotive industry, with parts such as material handling racks for several fabricators. Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/powder-coat/2284-prism-technologies-grows-powder-coating-operation-through-quality-turnaround-time

Alan Henry is the owner of ChromeTech of Wisconsin, an ISO-certified industrial plating operation that he founded in 1984. The company specializes in hard chrome, sulfamate nickel, electroless nickel, and nickel-chrome plating.The ChromeTech company is indeed a family affair; in addition to Alan, his wife, Vickie, and son, Zach, work there, and sister Adrianna also helped with marketing, writing, and photography throughout her high school and college years and even now.A decade ago, they added a 22,000-square-foot addition to their facility, bringing it to 44,000 square feet. They have about 28 employees and run three shifts, six manual lines, and one automated line for EN.For their hard chrome process, ChromeTech has a large automated line with four cells that can run up to 17 million parts a year and has over 3,000 recipes. They also have manual hard chrome lines.Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2223-brotherly-love-chrometech-picking-up-the-pieces-after-family-tragedy

Jesse Heines of Digger Specialties is the Corporate Powder Coating and Project Manager for the railing, fencing, and column manufacturer with various locations around the U.S. Loren “Digger” Graber founded his outdoor living and maintenance-free products in 1984, starting as a manufacturer of vinyl fencing and various other related maintenance-free products. Under his leadership, DSI has become one of North America's leading aluminum railing manufacturers for decks and porches.The company specializes in railing systems, screen rail (screen room enclosures), fencing, gates, columns, and outdoor lighting. Most of its products can be found at lumber yards, specialty building products locations, and retail stores such as Home Depot.  The company has five locations and has powder coating operations in three of them: Bremen, Indiana, which is also the corporate Offices; Valdosta, Georgia; Randleman, North Carolina; Carthage, Missouri; and Montgomery, Pennsylvania.For Heines, it was paramount to ensure that the powder coating lines were identical in the Indiana, Missouri, and Pennsylvania facilities, especially since the company offers a lifetime limited warranty on its products. 

Ross Peterson is the Chief Business Development Officer of ProPlate, an Anoka, Minnesota, company that finishes specialty items for the medical and surgical industry. In this podcast, Ross explains how ProPlate works closely with the medical community to come up with new finishes and coatings for critical medical parts.For example, ProPlate spent over a year developing a process to finish neodymium iron boron magnets, which can be up to 10 times stronger than the best ceramic magnets. Surgeons were hoping to implant some of the NdFeB magnets into newborns to help them with serious medical conditions that risked their ability to survive.Due to the base magnet material's porosity and the magnets' reactivity to acidic and basic chemistries, ProPlate faced a difficult challenge in designing a plating process for the magnets. Still, after a long R&D process, they met the requirements.Read the full article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2118-proplate-motivated-by-success-of-lifesaving-medical-coatings 

Navin Mangrue is Sales Manager for Professional Powder Coating located in Etobicoke, Ontario, a family-run shop in Toronto that is ready to coat anything that might need to survive in treacherous climate.“About 99% of what we powder coat is going to be sitting outside all day and all night and for years to come,” says Navin Mangrue, Sales Manager for Professional Powder Coating located in Etobicoke, Ontario. “So we are catering to rust, we're catering to blasting, and we're catering to galvanize. We know what these products are going to have to go through.”That’s one reason that Professional Powder Coating has invested heavily in an in-house laboratory where they subject their coatings to comprehensive testing, which includes conformity to ASTM standards, AAMA requirements, and other demanding testing protocols.Professional Powder Coating believes they will stay busy for years to come in certain industries like architecture — especially with the way housing starts and infrastructure keeps climbing.And a commitment to quality will lead the company as they continue to grow.“I strongly believe that if you put quality first in everything you do, then chances are your customer would pay the price,” Mangrue says. “If it's a railing and you're dealing with a large project in this area of expertise and powder coating, it takes educated people to tell them, ‘Let's use this product because it will fail otherwise. It has to be about quality.”Visit https://www.professionalpowdercoating.ca

New England Electropolishing owners Amy Prigmore and Luke Almeida discussed how their company in Fall River, Massachusetts, has evolved since their parents founded it in 1985.Alvin and Jeannine Almeida founded NEE and slowly grew the business over the next several decades. Al Almeida kept his day job distributing chemicals, and NEE had just two employees who performed the work Al brought to them.Read the full article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2049-with-one-focus-new-england-electropolishing-continues-to-shine-after-40-years

We talk with Francisco Capacho, President and General Manager of Dixon Hard Chrome in Sun Valley, California, about his path to success in the United States electroplating industry.Capacho began his career working at his father’s plating operation near Bogota, Columbia, where he was on the shop floor at age 5 following his father around the complex.In 2023, he moved to south to Southern California to run Dixon Hard Chrome, which has over 10,000 square feet in the building complex and an additional 23,000 square feet of storage space for parts and orders.Dixon Hard Chrome—founded by Richard Dixon in 1955—is a Nadcap facility that focuses on aerospace finishing and offers more than just the hard chrome in its name; the shop also specializes in copper plating and electroless nickel, plating on aluminum, cadmium plating, passivation, etching, and magnetic and penetrant inspection.Read the full article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2080-small-aerospace-parts-mean-big-growth-for-dixon-hard-chrome 

Bales Metal Surface Solutions’ owners, Stacey Bales and Sara Mortensen, chose a practical gift for themselves as they prepare for their anniversary in a few years.In March, the Downers Grove, Illinois, company christened a pair of new nickel lines at its 29,000-square-foot facility, doubling its capacity to reduce customer lead time by half and grow the business even more.“We’re hoping our 50th year in business is going to be a bang-out one,” says Stacey, whose late father started the company with his brother in 1978, giving them four years to meet some pretty big sales goals they have set for the shop.Check out the podcast where Stacey tells about how they are preparing themselves for growth in the coming years.You can also read the full article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2002-new-plating-lines-at-bales-metal-surface-solutions-celebrates-approaching-milestone

When Chuck Zinke built his second finishing and coating operation over 100 miles away from the first, he quickly added a new word to his vocabulary.“Delegation,” says Zinke, who started Perfection Industrial Finishing in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995 and added a second plant in 2020 in Chandler, about a 75-minute drive north near Phoenix.The expansion was necessary for Perfection, which offers powder coating, ceramic coating, liquid coating, and chemical conversion processes at both locations.Read more about Chuck and his shops at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/liquid-coat/1990-aiming-high-perfection-industrial-finishings-second-az-location-speeds-growth

We talk with Matt Fodge, the Vice President at Gleco Plating, and his dad, Jeff Fodge, President, which has two locations in Texas in Rowlett and McAllen.Gleco provides zinc, anodize, chromate, bright nickel, tin, silver, gold, and copper finishes to the automotive, defense, sheet metal, metal machining, and telecommunications industries.Jeff says about three years ago, Gleco decided to put a new management operating system in place that “caused all of us to think outside the box” as the company began to diversify its customer base even more and also look at how to attract the type of customers that would be a better fit for them, as well as return better margins.Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/1973-gleco-plating-adopts-less-is-more-approach-to-attract-customers

The markets that Melissa Ver Meer’s companies service could not be more varied, from screen printing to commercial food equipment to ovens and dryers for industrial manufacturing.However, one consistent feature of the various markets that HIX Corporation sells to is that Ver Meer knows she must have an extremely durable coating applied to all the machines, parts, and components.It’s a lesson that Ver Meer—who has a Doctorate in Materials Science from Iowa State—learned when she started her career in the oil and gas industry. As the Owner and CEO of HIX, she has carried this lesson forward.“I started in the control valve world, so material selection and finishes were important because they were in a lot of heavy industrial applications,” she says. “It was anything from power plants to pulp and paper mills to chemical operations; it was just a variety of whatever you could throw at it. We were trying to keep the control valve running, which was similar in the oil fields. You're just trying to get things to survive in these oil wells.”Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/powder-coat/1964-the-fix-for-hix-switch-to-powder-coating-helps-improve-throughput-quality

Anne Deacon Juhl, Ph. D., is the owner of AluConsult, where she consults with OEMs and manufacturers on aluminum and anodizing.Dr. Juhl recently celebrated her 25th as a consultant in the anodizing industry. She holds a Ph.D. in pulse anodizing of extruded and cast aluminum alloys from the Technical University of Denmark, Material and Surface Technology Department, and is an M.Sc. chemical engineer focusing on the corrosion resistance of light metals. She is also a member of the International Hard Anodizing Association and the Aluminum Anodizers Council.Visit https://aluconsult.com and visit https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/anodizing/1939-legends-dr-anne-deacon-juhl-aluconsult to read more about our interview.

Gary Hamby is the President and Chief Executive Officer at H&M Plating in Houston, Texas, and who saw his company grow in volume when many oil and gas operators had trouble getting parts for their equipment and facilities.Those supply chain problems forced many manufacturers to recondition their parts to keep operations going. Hamby and the four companies he runs — grinding, honing, and finishing — saw a huge benefit.“With the supply chain issues, you had to fix parts because there wasn't anything to buy,” Hamby says. “I think that most of our people out there realize that they can get parts back faster — and can get it back cheaper — as a better product with the coatings we put on it.”Read more about Gary and his company at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/1888-texas-h-m-plating-in-a-boom-time-with-acquisitions-growth

Robert Hunsucker purchased Future Finishes in Hamilton, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati in 2020, and has revitalized the company.After buying the struggling finishing company and moving from Michigan with his family, Hunsucker wasn’t turning a profit and was finding all kinds of issues with the equipment and systems he had mortgaged his life on.And with just two other employees to help him weather the storm of getting Future Finishes back up and running, his physical and mental well-being were also being tested. But looking back three years after taking on such a daunting task — and raising a young family in the process — Hunsucker takes a more liberal approach to grading his performance as president and CEO.Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/1868-new-owner-turns-struggles-into-rewards-at-future-finishes

We talk with Sandee Andrews, Co-Owner, Chief Financial Officer, and Strategic Director of Operations at Andrews Powder Coating in Los Angeles.Andrews Powder Coating holds numerous approvals and certifications, all of whoich Andrews and her team has worked diliogently to obtain:AS9100 | ISO 9001, recertified annually. Entering their sixth year doing Tier 1 space projects with prime contractors, and to their knowledge, are the only powder coating operation in the nation certified for space flight. Chemical Agent Resistant Coatings (CARC) approved for five years. APC uses powder for applications such as MIL PRF 32348 and has 18 powder coatings approved for all types and classes.Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) approvals for MIL PRF 24712, which includes 46 powder coatings approved for all types and classes.Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) approvals for WSD-C-0181A with approved productsMil-Spec and Qualified Products List (QPL) coatings certified to actual QPL products.AAMA 2605 Architectural Finishes has been certified for eight years and has to be recertified annually.FDA-compliant coatings are used in medical and food safety industries.While none of the approvals and certifications are easy to come by — or cheap, for that matter — Andrews says the company decided a long time ago to set itself apart from other coaters, especially in the Los Angeles area.“It started to happen when we were still in our first building in the San Fernando Valley,” she says. “It was filled with powder coaters almost on every corner. They were everywhere.”Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/powder-coat/1902-andrews-powder-coating-spreads-certified-services-from-coast-to-coast 

We talk with Tony Bouie, President of ChemResearch Corp. in Phoenix, Arizona, who takes a unique approach to how CRC views its staff and the unique approach to managing them.“I call it ‘People, Not Parts,’” says Bouie, whose company is a metal finishing service provider for the aerospace, defense, medical, semiconductor/electronics, space, and heavy equipment industries.“We are laser-focused on our customers, which for us includes employees,” he says. “If we take care of our employees, our customers will be taken care of. So we've done things that probably seem mundane but mean a lot to our employees.”Read the original article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/1829-az-finisher-chemresearch-focuses-on-staff-to-grow-business

We speak with George LaCapra Jr., President of UniMetal Surface Finishing, and Patrick Hayden, Senior Vice President, about the  company that has two facilities in Connecticut: one in Thomaston, that serves as headquarters and another in Naugatuck. Their key to success is running high-volume barrel, reel-to-reel, and short-run rack plating; in addition, they offer cleaning, deburring, precision cleaning, and vibratory finishes.Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/1777-unimetal-surface-finishing-uses-diversity-expertise-to-attract-oems

We talk with owner Rob Thomas of Anchor Bay Powder Coat in New Baltimore, Michigan, a 15-year-old shop that applies powder and liquid coating along with sandblasting and oven burn-off.Its roots go back to Thomas’ parent’s autobody finishing operation and a need to offer better coatings and improved quality to customers located about 35 miles northeast of Detroit.The company has two locations about 1.5 miles from each other: a 20,000-square-foot location that houses the original operation and a 33,000-square-foot spot that was needed to handle the additional work that ABPC has taken in over the last few years.Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/powder-coat/1760-anchor-bay-powder-coat-manages-growth-through-improved-shop-efficiencies

Tony Sclafani is Vice President and General Manager of the family-run Las Vegas AR Iron facility, including an in-house powder coating operation, AR Powder Coating.“We’re always looking to differentiate ourselves because every shop does the same thing, whether it’s an ornamental or powder coating,” Sclafani says. “Anybody can pick up a welder, and anybody can pick up a powder coat gun. But it’s how you do it and the steps you take. We won’t take shortcuts. I for sure will not.”They have over 20,000 square feet of production space and 20 employees, so drilling home to everyone the quest for quality and perfection is a non-stop endeavor of Sclafani and his management team.Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/powder-coat/1724-ar-powder-coating-earns-certs-through-training-and-persistence.Visit https://arpowdercoating.com.

Jason Pugh was in the powder coating industry for only a few months before his company — Key-Link Fencing and Railing — presented him with a huge challenge. Key-Link managers wanted Pugh — who had worked in the food service industry prior to being hired as powder coating manager in April 2022 — to put his coating team and its systems to the test by obtaining certification from the Powder Coating Institute.“We thought it would be something that would help set us apart from competitors,” Pugh says. “We’re always striving to get better. We want to learn where our shortfalls may be, what we can do to improve our processes, and what we can do to put a better quality product out.”Read the article HERE

Jim Jones spent more than 50 years in the finishing industry, you can now find him soaring high above the clouds these days as a pilot of his own planes after retiring from DIFCO in Georgia.After high school, Jones attended college and then enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, where he served in the Minuteman Missile Program at Vandenberg AFB in California and attended Alan Hancock College.“I also had for a while a part-time job in a plating shop in Santa Maria,” he says. In 1965, Jones’ father called him and said, “I need you,” and back to Georgia, he went to work at DIFCO.Read more about Jim at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/1658-legends-jim-jones-difco 

Ken Hoffmann was enjoying his life in luxurious Palm Springs, California when the call came that made him take a more serious tone about his life goals. He had worked in the construction business, in the restaurant industry, and even was a sommelier for a time in the glitzy Coachella Valley of California. Life was easy and fun more than 30 years ago for the married father of two.“I was moving along fine in my life, and my wife called me one day telling me she was pregnant,” Hoffmann recalls. “I can remember it like it was yesterday. I had to really find a business, and I talked to a guy who was a commercial realtor, and he turned me onto a plating shop.”Of course, Hoffmann knew absolutely nothing about the finishing industry.Read the full article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/1667-palm-springs-plating-looking-forward-to-trivalent-transition