One way to learn about Aalberts surface technologies is to look at the numbers.
In the U.S., the $3 billion Dutch-based company has eight coating operations that offer a wide array of coating techniques, including electroplating, e-coat, powder coat, thermal spray, and physical vapor deposition
On a global stage, parent Aalberts N.V. has 136 locations and over 14,000+ employees around the world that specialize not only in surface technologies but also in hydronic flow control, integrated piping systems, and advanced mechatronics.
While Aalberts has grown in the U.S. through acquisitions of existing facilities such as Impreglon, Roy Metal Finishing in South Carolina, and Precision Plating in Chicago, the company is more than buying operations, says Richard Wright, COO for Aalberts surface technologies, U.S.
“It’s all built around people,” he says. “We can’t do any of these things that we do at a local level if we didn’t have good leadership teams and good people inside of our organization.”
27 Operations in the U.S.
Precision Plating in Chicago offers rack, barrel, and reel-to-reel finishes.Aalberts has ownership of 27 operations in the U.S. that offer various heat treating and surface treatment applications and employs over 1,000+ people in those locations.
They include:
- Aalberts Surface Treatment, which was previously known as Impreglon, Inc., is located in Georgia, Tennessee, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, where they offer thermal spray processes such as flame, arc, plasma spray, and high-velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) sprays, as well as many polymer and specialty coatings.
- Roy Metal Finishing has two large operations in Greenville, SC. RMF is a major applicator of zinc plating, electrocoating, and powder coating, as well as additional processes, including hydrogen embrittlement relief, stainless steel passivation, vibratory deburring, and tumble blasting.
- Precision Plating in Chicago offers rack, barrel, and reel-to-reel finishes that include gold, silver, nickel, tin, copper, palladium, and tri-metal plating, as well as electroless nickel.
- Accurate Brazing, with two locations in Greenville, SC, and one each in New Hampshire and Connecticut. They offer vacuum brazing, heat treatment, hardening, and hot isostatic pressing (HIP), as well as assembly and preparation, testing, and inspection.
- Ionic Technologies in Greenville also offers heat-treating services, including nitriding, ferritic nitrocarburizing, vacuum heat treating, vacuum hardening, vacuum tempering, and cryogenic treatments to metal parts and substrates.
- Applied Process, which has locations in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arkansas that offer heat treatments and casting conversion services such as engineering efforts to convert metal fabrications to one-piece austempered ductile iron castings, which reduces weight, cost, and complexity while increasing strength, wear resistance, and toughness.
- Ushers Machine and Tool is a machining company in Greenville that has CNC multi-tasking machining centers, multi-axis turning and milling machining, and CNC precision automatic lathes.
- Premier Thermal, which is Aalberts most recent acquisition, has 10 locations throughout Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin, offering heat treating, annealing, ferritic nitrocarburizing, glycol quench, hyperquench, normalizing, and several other coating processes.
Aalberts Industries was founded by Dutch entrepreneur Jan Aalberts in 1975 and became public in 1987. Its purchase of Roy Metal Finishing in 2018 is what truly brought the company to the attention of those in the U.S. surface finishing industry.
Acquiring Roy Metal Finishing and Precision Plating
Roy Metal Finishing has two large operations in Greenville, SC. RMF is a major applicator of zinc plating, electrocoating, and powder coating, as well as additional processes, including hydrogen embrittlement relief, stainless steel passivation, vibratory deburring, and tumble blasting.With over 200 employees and $30 million in annual sales at the time of the purchase, RMF was one of the largest finishing and coating operations in North America.
Founded in 1961, RMF provides corrosion-resistant coatings to the automotive, heavy truck, and industrial/recreation vehicle markets to customers that include BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Ford, General Motors, FCA, Volvo, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai/Kia, John Deere, and Caterpillar.
“RMF is an outstanding leader in the metal finishing business, and this acquisition will provide a platform for us to expand our surface treatment network in the United States,” Oliver Jäger, executive director of Aalberts Industries, said at the time of the acquisition. “Their reputation in the metal finishing business is second to none, and we are proud to join a company that has had such stellar success over the years.”
In 2019, Aalberts acquired Precision Plating Co. in Chicago, which at the time had over 150 employees and $36 million in annual sales. PPC’s reel-to-reel surface treatment technology is similar to another Aalberts acquisition, PEM in France, which it bought in 2018.
“They will work closely together to exchange technology, processes, and machine know-how, to further improve their performance and to service global key accounts in Europe and North America,” Jäger said of the PPC purchase.
Continuing to Seek Acquisitions
Aalberts has ownership of 27 operations in the U.S. that offer various heat treating and surface treatment applications and employs over 1,000+ people in those locations. Aalberts has been active in the acquisition arena during the last several years, but Wright says they look for several key aspects of a business before considering whether to purchase it, including examining the strength of the current team of people.
“We like to invest in our current businesses and grow organically,” Wright says. “But our growth strategy does include an acquisition piece, and we are always interested in having conversations with companies that would be a good fit.”
While it may seem that the plating and coating business has no direct link to the heat treating or machining side of things, Wright feels that having several of these discreet manufacturing applications within the Aalberts group can lead to synergy.
“There are constant conversations that take place between the businesses to encourage sharing of information, he says. “So if RMF is talking to somebody about plating or coating, and in that conversation generally we ask, ‘Do you have any other needs for heat treating or machining,’ then we can service that same customer, which is something they might be looking to do to consolidate suppliers.”
With AST, RMF and PPC together performing almost every finishing and coating process — from plating to powder coating to electrocoat to PVD — the U.S. companies have their eye on adding anodizing to their technology offering, which they currently do not have in the U.S. Wright is noncommittal on getting that specific regarding a future purchase.
“We talk to a lot of people, and there are some interesting opportunities for us, I believe,” he says. “We’re a growth-oriented company. We never try to be everything for everyone, so whether it’s an investment in organic growth or investment in acquisition growth, it has to make sense for us.”
Rebranding Efforts to Broaden Aalbert Surface Finishing
Precision Plating offers reel-to-reel finishes.In the meantime, Wright and his team are undertaking a rebranding challenge of getting Aalberts surface technologies more known in the U.S. and North America to help foster growth and understanding of all that they do for their customers.
Wright said what they have learned is that a lot of people in the various manufacturing industries are not fully aware of who and what Alberts is all about, especially large OEMs, such as those in automotive and aerospace.
“When you are talking to a billion-dollar company that is a current or potential customer, you want them to know they are talking to another billion-dollar company,” he says. “We have a good story to tell about a 40-year company that was built via organic growth, as well as acquisition growth.”
The challenge with simply rebranding all of the Aalberts surface technologies locations in the U.S. — such as changing the name of Roy Metal Finishing or Precision Plating — is losing that loyalty that has built up with those local companies, and it is something that neither Wright nor Aalberts is quick to do.
“We want to show that we are a unified group of companies,” Wright says. “But at the local level, we still want to keep the local DNA. They know the customers, they know the region, and they know the processes. And Alberts doesn’t want to do anything to minimize that.”
Leverage the ‘Best of Both Worlds
Roy Metal Finishing a major applicator of zinc plating, electrocoating, and powder coating.Slowly, Aalberts’ logos have begun to appear on websites and business cards of U.S. entities, and some will switch over to the full Aalberts surface technologies name and look. Others will continue to change over time.
The big change that customers will see is that the U.S. locations have the full strength of a global corporation backing them, which includes helping the locations improve their facilities, purchase new equipment, and expand if necessary.
“We are trying to leverage the best of both worlds,” Wright says. “Whatever we can do to help the local business team succeed, we will. Whether that’s making a financial investment in new technology, or whether it’s ‘share and learn,’ we try to globally and locally do things to share ideas and best practices.”
