Raising the Roof in Las Vegas

Commercial and technical representatives from Americhem’s building products team visited the InternationalRoofing Expo (IRE) last week at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. We’ve attended the last two shows and the market appears to be growing. One of our customers who has exhibited at the Expo for years said he thought attendance was up, probably the highest attendance he has seen at this show. Preshow exhibitor news confirmed that this was the largest Roofing Expo ever in terms of exhibit space, which was completely sold out. The show encompassed 131,000 square feet and 465 exhibitors, the most in the history of the 62-year show.

In addition to the trade show, the National Roofing Contractors Association holds their annual convention at the venue. Forty-four educational sessions were held on a variety of topics, many of which were approved for continuing education credits.

From our perspective, the most commonly displayed roofing was metal, steep slope roofing, both for commercial and residential properties. Steel and aluminum materials in these roofs are painted to achieve the desired aesthetic. These roofing systems are considered lighter in weight and more durable than their asphalt counterparts.

A couple of companies were geared towards residential steep slope and produced polymeric roofing. These products were injection molded, and fit into two categories: similar to cedar shakes and a slate-like appearance. The ability to create custom colors was touted by one of these organizations. Some of these materials had a different look, more like flexible cedar shake. Some of these products come with 50 year warranties, class 4 impact resistance and a class A fire rating.

From a standpoint of booth size, the top three were definitely GAF, Johns Manville and Firestone Building Products. Other sizeable players included Seaman Corporation and Carlisle Syntec Systems. There was a lot of equipment at this show, certainly more than last year. The most prominent group of these seemed to be ultrasonic welding equipment.

We learned a lot about the industry during our visit to IRE. Next year’s show moves to New Orleans, from February 6-8. Until then, Americhem will continue to innovate  on behalf of our roofing customers, leading the industry in color and natural woodgrain and other effects. Polymeric roofing has come a long way, and we’re proud to have taken part in its growth to this point.

Kelly Gager

Development Segment Leader – Building & Construction

Brian Cur

Field Service Specialist

Americhem Supports by Participation in AAMA 80th Annual Conference

I attended the AAMA (American Architectural Manufacturers Association) 80^th annual conference in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. It was held from Feb. 12-15 and it attracted an excellent turnout of 360 attendees, one of the best attendance figures since I’ve been attending these events.

The conference consists of 1-2 hour sessions including council meetings geared toward window, door, skylight, curtain wall and storefront manufacturers. AAMA is a material neutral organization, so materials of all kinds are covered under their product umbrella. I sit on several task groups, which help set the standards for the window industry in areas such as thermal performance, insulating glass certification and code acceptance. Other committees include the aluminum materials council, the wall interface council and the residential products council. Building products manufacturers covet AAMA’s certifications and approvals, and the standards are some of the toughest in this industry. An awards banquet was held Monday night where the contributions and accomplishments of award winners was recognized.

There were a variety of good speakers at the conference, including Dick Doyle, head of The Vinyl Institute, who advocated the use of vinyl in windows and doors and also spoke of the institute’s lobbying efforts in Washington D.C. There were even speakers who talked about persuasive and selling skills, such as the role that body language plays in achieving what you want to achieve. The sessions were spirited and showed that the industry as a whole is moving forward in protecting home owners and commercial property owners with its research and certification programs.

For Americhem, this is a great opportunity to support the industry and to help AAMA achieve its goals. The top decision makers in the industry are present and this makes the event one of the most important that we attend each year. It’s also a great networking opportunity where all the important manufacturers in the industry gather in one place at one time. Color certainly plays an important part in the proceedings, as the vinyl materials council advocated switching to a CIE color system for its products. Americhem proudly manufacturers color and additive masterbatches that play a crucial role in architectural products. We enjoy bringing innovation to our customers, many of whom were in attendance at the conference. We also enjoy helping our customers attain AAMA certificiations. I look forward to representing Americhem at the AAMA conference for many years to come.

Rich Camacho

National Account Manager
Americhem, Inc.

 

Wrap-Up from the Remodeling Show/Deck Expo

Our commercial team attended the Remodeling Show/DeckExpo exhibition last week in Chicago. The event was held at Navy Pier on October 1-2. Educational sessions began on September 30 and ran through the end of the show.  This exhibition is held annually and the pattern lately has been to alternate shows between Baltimore and Chicago. For whatever reason, the Baltimore show tends to be the bigger of the two, but there was decent traffic throughout the opening day of the show, which was when we visited.

The show was characterized by a lack of new products. There were several items that had been introduced last year, but truly new offerings were hard to come by. For us, visiting the show was very worthwhile because we were able to talk to many of our customers in one place at one time, and our meetings with them were productive.

One item of note was the change of venue from the McCormick Place site to Navy Pier. The Pier has a small exposition center in a building farthest from the shore and it was busy throughout our visit. There were several nice restaurants right on Navy Pier, which made it an ideal locale for business lunches and dinners. Because McCormick Place is so big, it is isolated from the walkable part of Chicago, so it’s opportunities for on-site dining and other attractions is not nearly as great as what the Navy Pier had to offer.

All of the major players in the decking industry exhibited along with some of the producers of fencing, windows, roofing and cladding. The overall outlook on the industry seemed to be optimistic but guarded. It’s as if those in the building industry aren’t quite sure what to expect of the economy or the sector as a whole. Some of this is understandable, since the building industry was the one hardest hit over the last decade, so even when it’s easy for other industries to feel bullish, producers of building products are approaching the future with caution.

We’ll be anxious to see what the industry as a whole sees as their future when we visit the International Builder’s Show in January. In the meantime, if you’d like to give your opinion on the Remodeler’s Show/Deck Expo or comment on the state of the industry as a whole, please feel free to leave us a comment so we can continue the conversation.

Herman Volkening

Account Manager, Americhem, Inc.

Vinyl Siding Institute Member Companies Meet to Move Industry Forward

Kate Offringa presided over
the first VSI member meeting since
she became president in 2014.

The VinylSiding Institute (VSI) ushered in some big changes during its semi-annual membership meeting held April 19-21 in St. Petersburg, Fla. The meeting saw some new VSI board members added and a new president, Kate Offringa, who officiated at her first VSI member meeting. Offringa, named president in late 2014, comes to VSI with extensive executive management experience, including serving as executive director of the Vinyl Building Council and president and CEO of the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association.

There was a lot of excitement about the changes and one of the meeting’s key objectives was to enhance vinyl siding’s already solid leadership position in the cladding marketplace. There is a lot of optimism within the VSI, both for the housing market in general and the vinyl siding category. It was great to see the membership working together to advance the common goal of ensuring a quality product category for the homeowner. It was especially heartening to see companies that compete against one another on a daily basis coming together in the best interest of the industry, and the end consumer.

Over the last 20 years, VSI has introduced a certification program to ensure that the industry manufactured vinyl siding to meet or exceed quality standards. Later it would sponsor a Certified Installer program so that these products were installed properly. With these programs in place, VSI sought to educate builders, remodelers, planners and architects on the performance benefits of vinyl siding. Homeowners were added to this education campaign in 2014. And they’re not done yet. The buzz at this year’s spring meeting was about VSI’s next evolutionary leap forward. The Steering Committee and Board have agreed to hold a strategic planning meeting this summer to advance the priorities of its members. It signals a new dynamic that will create value for suppliers and manufacturers alike.

The meeting also included several excellent speakers, including one who spoke to the group about demography. This is a key topic as VSI seeks to educate consumers throughout North America. VSI’s next member meeting will be held September 16-18 in Washington, D.C., when we’ll learn a lot more about the organization’s efforts to serve the needs of its members as well as the industry. 

Mike Fair

Market Manager, Architecture

Americhem, Inc.

Best Qualities of Composite Decking

Classic wood decking sure looks good, but it comes with a lot of maintenance. That’s why composite decking is a populor option for people looking to stay away from the potential splinters and staining sessions.

Composite decking needs to maintain the look of real wood for a long time, which is why Americhem offers premium color masterbatches that keep the faux option looking excellent for longer.

Faux Wood That Looks Real

Good composite decking has to pass the eye test. A big part of having a product look like real wood is to effectively mirror woodgrain patterns, which is why Americhem came up with our nGrain® simulated woodgrain technology.

nGrain® is compatible with various resins, giving composite decking the look of natural wood, with realistic streak types and grain patterns built directly into the formulation. 

Weather Resistance

Decking should be built to last. Real wood can worsen with age, with splintering, mold, and fading colors as eventual possibilities. Americhem can help composite decking look good for a long time, as nGrain® is designed with durability in mind.

Still not sure about how your composite decking will hold up to Mother Nature? In order to maintain color retention and functional longevity, we can test your products in our weathering testing facilities, allowing us to determine just how they will react to long-term exposure to UV light, heat, moisture, and humidity.

A Masterbatch Solution

People want to enjoy their deck and not have to constantly maintain it. Composite decking enhanced with Americhem’s custom color masterbatches can look just as good as a wooden deck and maintain its quality for much longer.

Give us a call at 1-800-228-3476 or contact us online to see how Americhem can benefit you.

The Vinyl Siding Institute and Americhem

Americhem as been a member of The Vinyl Siding Institute (VSI) since the institute’s inception. VSI started off in the 1960’s and at that time, they were a part of the Society of the Plastics Industry. Americhem was involved with the organization from the very beginning of the vinyl siding industry, which also started in the 1960s.

Americhem has played a key role in the coloring and color retention of vinyl siding. Former Director of Research Rick Mathew knew that color retention was going to be crucial in the industry’s foundation.

Based on his knowledge of color science, he knew that the numeric ΔE value, which measures the color difference between the initial color and the color of weathered siding, does not always agree with visual assessments of color difference.  Rick lead the industry in establishing hand drawn ellipses for multiple regions of color space that corresponded to a visual assessment of the limits of acceptable color change in siding after weathering.

Back in those days, in order to determine if a vinyl siding color was within the acceptable color change limits, Americhem employees made hand drawn ellipses for each of the vinyl siding color spaces, plotting the ΔE’s by hand. This was in the time before personal computers which now make such tasks much easier. The work done by Americhem helped establish a new standard in the industry, ASTM 3679. This specification establishes requirements and test methods for the materials, dimensions, warp, shrinkage, impact strength, expansion, appearance, and wind load resistance of extruded PVC siding. The weathering component of the standard was an appendix which remained in place until the late 90’s, when Americhem scientist Phil Ledgerwood urged the industry to move to mathematical equivalents of the hand drawn ellipses. This resulted in a new, easier method of determining if weathered panels met the color retention requirements.

Americhem has continued its contributions to VSI until the present day, including the introduction of CIEL*a*b* ΔE2000 as the method of choice for vinyl siding color retention over the previous Hunter Lab method. This move redefined what was acceptable and unacceptable in the industry.

Americhem employees have served on committees within the VSI, including several polypropylene task groups, the heat distortion committee and the life cycle analysis group. Beyond the organization, Americhem has helped dozens of vinyl siding manufacturers over the years to optimize their product offerings.

In 2005, Ledgerwood won the VSI’s Ken Mieure Award for distinguished service, which was one of the first awards given to an employee of an industry supplier (most past awards went to employees of vinyl siding makers.) The award was created in the late 1990s and recognizes extraordinary efforts of members in helping to build and advance the industry. 

We continue our active participation in VSI and recently, market segment manager Mike Fair was named to VSI’s board. Americhem’s contributions continue with our work in dark color spaces, where the goal is to prevent heat distortion, and in variegated products that simulate the look of natural wood grain. The VSI has served a valuable role in the industry by establishing standards and monitoring for the industry’s products. Many industries could benefit from following VSI’s model.

IBS 2015 Exceeds Expectations

Each year, Americhem’s Architecture business team visits the International Builder’s Show (IBS), held annually at the alternating venues of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.

This year’s show in Las Vegas has been encouraging to everyone in our delegation. Traffic and exhibitors are both on the rise and the halls are as busy as we’ve seen them for the past several years. The building and construction market is improving, and even though it was one of the last industries to come back to its pre-recession levels, all of the exhibitors here seem bullish on the future.

We’ve visited each of our customer’s displays and many more. Each and every customer we've talked to said that business at this show has been great. The show also takes up much more real estate this year. There are three full exhibition halls and some outside exhibits. Shows in the recent past struggled to fill one and a half halls. The booths of many of the major suppliers are also bigger this year. Another factor in the show’s growth is the addition of the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show which is co-located with IBS.

We didn’t notice a lot of new products amongst the exhibits, although one of our customers was launching a new PVC deck board which looks to our team like the best impression of natural wood to date in a PVC board. During day one of the show on Tuesday, one of our customers said that there were so many people in their booth that you couldn’t move and today was just as packed. Even the monorail on the Las Vegas strip was so full that we had to take a cab to the show this morning.

We had several people making their first visit to the show and they’re first impressions were interesting. Account manager Stefanie Holtham said, “Of all the trade shows I’ve ever been to, this was the most informative. It’s a great place to learn about the building and construction industry.” Account manager Mark Juve liked the professionalism of the booth displays, many of them containing interactive elements. Companies like Ply Gem invested heavily in their displays and Ply Gem’s booth appeared to be the largest booth in the IBS portion of the exhibition.

We were pleased to see our customers’ products that displayed Americhem technology – even the deck on one of the model homes outside featured color and additive solutions from Americhem. If this week’s show is any indication, the building and construction industry appears poised for a great comeback in 2015.

Mike Fair

Market Segment Manager, Architecture, Americhem Inc.

We're Always Learning When it Comes to Weathering

One of Americhem’s core competencies has always been weathering. We help customers understand how their products are going to stand up to the elements, whether they’re used outdoors, like wood composite deck boards, or indoors, like commercial or residential carpeting. We’ve been at the forefront of weathering testing technology for polymeric products for decades, and we’re proud that we’ve helped establish some of the standard weathering tests that are used in various polymeric product industries.

When it comes to weathering, Americhem has a deep knowledge base, and we’re always learning. That’s why the results of a recent long-term outdoor weathering study were very interesting to us. We believe the results urge some caution on the part of building products manufacturers when using accelerated testing as a predictor of real world weathering.

Our researchers tested several polymeric compounds used in building products, including PVC, an enhanced PVC compound, some PVC blends and ASA. The samples were brown in color with lightness (L*) values between 35 and 65. Testing was performed by QUV accelerated testing devices with water spray capabilities (to simulated outdoor moisture/condensation exposure) in accordance with the ASTM D4329 standard. The length of the accelerated testing was 2,500 hours, which is a period determined to be most closely associated with a two-year outdoor exposure period. The outdoor testing was completed after two years at three sites representing three different climates: humid continental Ohio, humid sub-tropical Florida and arid Arizona. The exposed materials, both to accelerated and outdoor testing, were then compared to one another for each material.

For PVC, with typically poor weathering performance, the samples weathered equally poorly in accelerated and outdoor exposure. Enhanced PVC weathered well in outdoor trials at all three locations, but accelerated tests showed much more color fade than the real world trials. So if accelerated QUV testing results were given significant weight, the material which performed very well in the real world might never have been produced.

In PVC blends containing PVC and varying amounts ASA or acrylic, the correlation between accelerated and outdoor weathering was also quite weak. Additionally, the weathering performance was inconsistent between the three outdoor sites. We drew the conclusion that the materials in blends might not be fully compatible, forming two separate weathering phases. Finally, ASA was tested and found to be highly weatherable and well correlated between accelerated QUV testing and real world outdoor weathering.

What did we learn? We considered these to be the major takeaways:

• Enhanced PVC and ASA are good performers and superior to PVC and PVC blends in weatherability.
• Outdoor testing in end-use environments is vital, because accelerated weathering’s ability to predict performance is at least somewhat inaccurate.
• QUV testing results are more apt to be accurate with single polymer compounds.

So, Americhem’s weathering experts are learning every day. The results of their work can have a big impact on the producers of polymeric building products, and we hope this insight can be of assistance to our customers. Americhem is working on a white paper which will be available soon that contains much more detail on this important study. In the meantime, to learn more about Americhem’s weathering capabilities visit our website.

Scott Blanchard

Senior Corporate Marketing Specialist