Own production of sandwich panels is a reality as of Jan. 1, 2020

For 12 years now, the company has been supplying sheathed profiles in a color of your choice to both profile houses and window manufacturers. Colormatics NV from Maasmechelen is well on the map when it comes to color. Anyone who knows director and owner Jean-Pierre Konings a little knows that he never sits still and is always looking for things that can serve new markets or involve process improvement.

"Sometimes we hit it off and can speak of a combination of process improvement and tapping into new markets," Konings opens the conversation. "Indeed, we are proud to announce that a new gluing machine is currently being installed that will allow us to apply different materials to each other. From January 2020, we will officially take this machine into operation."

From contract shell company to product developer

Konings reminds us again that Colormatics used to be (and still is) a contract coating company, but has since grown into a product developer. "The purchase of the new machine is a great example of that. We can now make our own sandwich panels and in the process have the ability to glue different materials together. Instead of foiling customer-supplied sandwich panels, we can now supply ready-made panels that are immediately color-matched."

Jean-Pierre Konings.

It would be obvious that the door industry would be the first to sign up to take advantage of this new service. Yet Konings is looking a few steps further and sees new possibilities on the horizon. "For example, we can glue MDF boards themselves into sandwich boards, which may or may not consist of multiple colors. Ideal for interior applications involving decorative milling. We can also apply insulation material to drywall. This allows a joinery company to work very quickly and efficiently, without any mess."

The investigation started

Konings always thinks in terms of possibilities and solutions with his Colormatics. "I am sure that a year from now we will be able to say that we are doing much more with this machine than we started with. We have only just started researching which materials we can combine all of them. We can start doing the tests based on our own curiosity, or based on questions from the market. Our adhesive supplier Kleiberit is working closely with us to identify all the possibilities. We therefore challenge our customers to think 'out of the box.'"

Logical step in the whole process

"We had been sheathing sheet materials with foil for some time, of course, but watched our customers go to third parties with that to have them sandwich them. For us it is a logical step to now offer that ourselves. We also have the stock of sheet materials for that, in different materials and colors," Konings concludes.