PPG Extrusion Coatings Group Reaches 100,000th Color Match

SPRINGDALE, Pa.--Oct. 2, 20046, 2004--The PPG Industrial Finishes Color Services team has reached a milestone with creation of its 100,000th custom color match, labeled UC100000 Polycron(R) III Harp Beige.

PPG has supplied custom color matches and panels to the coil and aluminum extrusion industry for more than 30 years.

"Over three decades of color-matching PPG has made tremendous improvements in efficiency," said Shelley Sturdevant, PPG's color services manager. "Once a task of manually grinding pigments with resins and solvents, color-matching has evolved into an automated activity with use of PPG's proprietary Kaleidoscope(TM) dispense-cell technology."

PPG's Color Services team automatically dispenses and color-matches for coil and aluminum extrusion customers around the globe. Each color created for a customer is assigned a unique product code for identification and manufacturing -- such as the record-setting UC100000 Polycron III Harp Beige, which was matched for PPG extrusion customer EPCO Extrusion Painting Co., of Boardman, Ohio.

Tremendous improvements have also been made in the communication of color-match specifications to coatings manufacturing facilities across PPG's global operation, Sturdevant said. PPG Color Services manages and utilizes a database of colors, allowing the precise relaying of color specifications via the Web to 10 PPG manufacturing locations and to more than 50 customer locations. "Using consistent information allows for the highest level of color accuracy and repeatability, batch to batch," Sturdevant said.

Color preferences in today's architectural and building product markets are diverse. "From the classic earth-tone palette of whites and beiges to the bold selections of greens, blues and reds to the exotic world of mica and metallic containing silvers, champagnes and bronzes," Sturdevant said, "PPG can offer today's architect an array of custom color choices as well as more than 65,000 existing colors."

PPG's line of high-performance coil and extrusion coatings, Duranar(R), Megaflon(R), a member of the Coraflon(R) family of coatings and Acrynar(R) FX, combine PPG proprietary resins and pigment technologies. PPG custom colors can be seen on famous structures around the world, from Shea Stadium in New York City to the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank to the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Based in Pittsburgh, with its industrial finishes business in nearby Springdale, Pa., PPG Industries is an $8.8 billion corporation that is a global leader in the manufacture of architectural, industrial and automotive coatings as well as chemicals, glass and fiber glass for a variety of customers worldwide.