In a show of confi dence in the wood window market, South London company Grabex Windows Ltd has just installed Finiture’s state of-the-art robotic spraying system in its new factory in Orpington.
The half-million-pound-plus investment includes a fully automated robotic spraying system, double rail overhead conveyor, impregnation tunnel, flow coater, humidifier, drying tunnel, water washer and dry painting booth, as well as a new biomass boiler that burns shavings to heat the factory.
Although he started out in PVCu, Grabex’s owner, Michael Grabowski, has become something of a wood convert. PVCu is still important to Grabex, but he sees the growth in the market coming from more upmarket products such as aluminium and timber.
"PVCu is our bread and butter, but we don’t see any growth in this sector," he said.
"Timber will grow – everyone’s going for natural products at the moment – it’s where we will focus over the next two years. Most of our customers are from London, where there are plenty of conservation areas and period homes", said Mr Grabowski.
"And, with timber, people are happy to pay a little more to get the quality they want. These are bespoke clients looking for bespoke products with a bespoke finish – lots of arches and circles. We can sell as many timber windows as we can make."
This optimism about timber reflects the findings of the latest report on the UK windows market by Palmer Market Research that shows installed prices for PVCu windows have remained pretty much unchanged since 2000 despite inflation, compared with a 100% increase achieved by timber windows.
At the same time Palmer forecasts increases in unit sales for timber windows over the _ next five years against static or declining sales for PVCu.
For Grabex, the move to a new 45,000ft2 purpose-built factory in September 2015, meant they finally had room to install the fully automated robotic finishing line they needed in order to increase production, ensure a consistently high quality finish and the lowest possible impact on the environment.
Finiture won the contract because, although not the cheapest, it had experience across Europe, showed the best understanding of the job and came up with the right specification, including the effective environmental protection technology. The line was installed and in operation within four weeks, with an initial throughput of 50 windows a week set to double in the next few months.
It’s unusual for a company the size of Grabex to make this scale of investment in automation in the UK. So it’s worth looking in some detail at the installation and the benefits seen in the first few months of operation.
The fully automated line flow-coats the preservative, primer and the first of the four paint coats. The spray coats are then delivered by a robot – all under humidity and temperature control to ensure the ideal climate for the surface of the coating to avoid the ‘orange peel’ effect, before going through the drying tunnel. When the system is cleaned down, a water washer is used to separate any waste coating into clean water and solid waste. Grabex also has a dry painting booth for one-off jobs that can be finished in parallel to the main line.
The most obvious benefit is increased productivity, already up by 15-20%, with more to come. This is not so much owing to the speed of coating each individual window, but from the consistency of the robotic process, which can be maintained hour after hour, day and night.
This consistency is also key to an improvement in quality. The robot does what it is programmed to do each and every time, delivering exactly the right amount of paint from exactly the right distance, in exactly the right humidity and temperature conditions, so that all surfaces of the window have precisely the right film thickness and no hidden areas are skimped. This consistent accuracy allows the coatings manufacturer to offer a 10-year warranty.
There are also significant sustainability benefits that go hand in hand with cost savings.
So far the combination of low overspray achieved by the electrostatic technology and more efficient recovery has resulted in a 30% savings on paint, while energy consumption has been reduced by the high efficiency drying system and air and heat recovery in the paint booth.
Staff, who no longer have to spend extended periods in the spray booth, enjoy a healthier environment, and emissions are minimised by an effective ventilation and filtration system.
The robotic system gives the factory all the flexibility Grabex needs to offer a wide range of solid colours, translucents and even duo-finishes.
A minimum of three windows makes a change of colour worthwhile, and the change itself only takes a couple of minutes.
You might think that dealing with a company in Italy would complicate service issues and lead to expensive downtime. But Grabex says the reverse has proved to be the case, with questions answered through Skype calls and engineers enjoying remote access over the internet.
With timber one of the few sectors of the UK windows market set for growth, we may see more manufacturers showing Grabex’s confidence by investing in the future of their businesses, improving productivity, quality, working conditions and their impact on the environment.
