Industrial wet coating has a future in the Netherlands

There just aren't many. And he gets that. This year his company has existed for 25 years and he has experienced all the ups and downs with his people. But he has always found solutions. “Always a new issue: how do you distinguish yourself?

“Look what we have accomplished! There is more than just powder,” says Marc Kessels enthusiastically. The founder and owner of Perfect Coat is proud of what he has achieved. Exactly a quarter of a century ago this year, he started his business plan for a wet coating company in Beringe and has now grown into an expert in the industrial coating of plastic parts with sixty employees.

When Kessels started in 1999, setting up a wet paint coating company was not easy. Logical, since plastic wet painting requires a very clean environment. Processing wood first in a spray booth and then plastic is not possible. “We were a bit on our own. I remember in 1999 when I started that a Vademecum was published for surface technology. That was a big book and I bought it immediately. I'm looking for wet paints made of plastic. It turned out that there was only one paragraph on that subject in the entire book.”

Robot

Today's world looks different. Industrial wet painting has been further developed, especially in the field of automation. In 1999, everything was still done manually, Kessels remembers. “There were opportunities to specialize in plastic and perform as much automated wet painting as possible. I was inspired by a job from a company where I worked. Plastic parts were painted there, but they all had to be identical. This was done manually, so you could not guarantee that a Monday morning part was the same as a Friday afternoon part. In addition, metal parts were increasingly converted into plastic parts, with increasingly higher requirements. So it had to be automated. That stuck in my head.”

The core of his idea was that painting should be done with a robot. That did not yet happen in the Netherlands. In Germany, with a larger automotive industry, it was common. In May 1999, Kessels ordered an (expensive) line, in October he set up the line in a rented building and in 2000 Perfect Coat was ready. And then? Two difficult years. Kessels is and remains a technician, with a heart for technology – not primarily for sales. That was a tough learning process for the novice entrepreneur. But between 2002 and 2004 the order book filled up. So full that a second line had to be added.

Kessels: “The trend I saw was that products were becoming smaller and flatter. There was miniaturization. So I needed a different type of line as a second line. It became a flat spray machine. But with the higher demands of the industry, the organization also had to reach a higher level. We were already ISO-9001 certified, ISO 14001 came soon after.”

Crisis

Just when Kessels and his people had things on track, disaster struck: the financial crisis of 2008. While the order book was still 100 percent full in September of that year, at the end of 2008 the requests were only 20 percent. Perfect Coat had to downsize and thanks to an order from Stokke (known for its trip-trap chair, among other things), Kessels was able to keep its head above water. Step by step, the economy and therefore also Perfect Coat recovered in the following years, but in 2012 there was a second – smaller – economic crisis. That got Kessels thinking: we need to relieve the customer more of his worries.

“We noticed that our customers increasingly wanted a kind of one-stop shop. They wanted to place everything with one party, so that they could work on their own processes. On the one hand because many people retired, on the other hand because there was little young recruitment. We wanted to help solve that knowledge problem by providing moulds, in addition to injection molding and painting and possibly assembling and lasering painted products. This was very popular with our customers. We were given more responsibility and a lot of confidence.”

The work that Kessels and his sixty employees did was competitive with German, Czech and Polish industrial wet paint companies. “That was a new issue. How do you distinguish yourself? Ultimately, there is only one option: by delivering the highest quality. It's easy to say, but difficult to do. They can also apply a matte black paint on a plastic product in cheaper countries. But high gloss? Without dots? They can't. That requires careful work and you have to stay with it every step of the way. Our foreign competitors will certainly be able to do that one day, but then we are already working on the next step.”

Bumper

Because in 2019, Kessels had to reorganize the entire organization to cope with the quality and quantity. So a start has been made on certification according to IATF 16949, the strictest requirements for the quality management system with regard to the design and development, production and installation of automotive-related products. They obtained the certificate last year.

The first project for which Perfect Coat acted as project manager was also launched in 2019: the speed diffuser. That is the bottom part of a bumper, high-gloss black on a polypropylene part. “A challenge, because it was 1.70 meters tall and strongly 3-dimensional. We needed a large mold and a large injection molding machine. In Germany we found a partner who could realize both things for us. That was a milestone for us.”

Perhaps not directly because of this, but it must have played a role in the fact that Perfect Coat subsequently received a large order for the DAF Next5 Generation: all silver parts of the grill. In the past, such parts were chrome-plated, but due to the Cr6 problem, these types of parts are now painted. A mega order, which allowed Perfect Coat to install a second flat spray machine.

Vision

Kessels is very proud. 'His' company has been around for a quarter of a century this year and it has overcome difficult times and is a unique player in the Dutch surface treatment landscape. Kessels: “I started from scratch. I had the choice to work as a hand sprayer. But I wrote a good plan and went to my customers with an attractive story. They were convinced that industrial wet painting could be a good choice for them. Automation was and is central. I think there is still a lot to be achieved there. But also that new, interesting developments are emerging. The next step is to use vision techniques and robots. We also want to continue to lead the way in the Netherlands. Industrial wet painting has a future here. We have proven that.”