First architectural aluminium shipments to Europe

Architectural profile is now shipping to European customers. The qualifying work was in three places: the ED coating, the alloy, and a dimensional check on every bar rather than on a sample from the batch.

Architectural profile is now shipping to customers in Europe. It is a market that buys on paperwork before it buys on price: durability, load, surface treatment and corrosion resistance all have to be evidenced, and the environmental and safety rules sit on top of that.

Three things carried the qualification. The ED coating gives adhesion and corrosion resistance across a whole section rather than only on the faces a spray gun reaches. The alloy was specified for hardness and load rather than for ease of extrusion. And the dimensional check moved from a sample per batch to every bar — section, wall thickness and surface, checked before packing.

The last of those is the expensive one and the reason the others hold. A European fabricator is cutting to a shop drawing with no allowance for a bar that is half a millimetre out, and finds out at assembly rather than at goods-in.

The work now is capacity and range: more sections qualified to the same checks, and the same standard applied to the markets that come after this one.