Barrette Outdoor Living is a leading North American supplier of exterior home products to the residential market, producing composite, vinyl, aluminum and steel fencing and railing; composite decking; and other outdoor products.
Chip HowisonHeadquartered in Galloway, NJ, the company employs more than 2,000 people at 10 locations throughout the United States; including a 300,000 square foot facility in Brooksville, Florida, which serves as a hub of powder coating activity for Barrette Outdoor Living’s aluminum fencing and railing lines.
“Powder coating is a tremendous market that continues to grow as more companies move away from liquid and use powder as a better solution to paint their products where feasible,” says Chip Howison, Vice President of Production for Barrette Outdoor Living.
Howison says powder is the right solution for companies who want to save time, money and reduce their carbon footprint.
“Although there are applications where liquid paint is a good solution for painting a product due to substrate material,” he says. “existing equipment or piece price costs, powder coating — with its clear environmental advantages — is often the preferred option and should be considered when evaluating a finishing operation.”
The benefits of higher paint utilization through reclaim, reduced waste disposal costs and being a user-friendly material makes powder paint a more environmentally-friendly finishing process.
In addition to its many environmental benefits, powder coating technology continues to improve. In addition to its many environmental benefits, powder coating technology continues to push the industry to embrace its sustainability benefit, like finding new fencing materials to apply powder to — like wood.
Striving for the Best In Product Design
Barrette Outdoor Living’s mission is to lead the industry in providing quality products and services that enhance their customers’ lives. Barrette Outdoor Living’s engineers have garnered more than 100 patents, designed proprietary state-of-the-art machinery and lead the industry in testing and control standards. “Our outdoor products are meticulously designed for durability and are supported by the best warranties you’ll find,” Howison says.
In fact, the Brooksville plant has been recognized six years in a row as one of its “Top Shops” for powder coating.
“Our people share a passion for our business,” Howison says, “It takes a team of employees working together on a daily basis across three shifts to achieve this honor year after year. They work with skill, teamwork and integrity to deliver on the promise of providing superior products.”
Since they paint full assemblies and piece parts, they had to find a powder with the right chemistry to handle both issues.
“We worked with several powder suppliers for over a year to come up with the right powder formula to handle both applications,” Howison says. “When all is said and done, it’s very satisfying to find the best solution that ultimately takes care of our customers.”
Working Closely with Suppliers
Barrette Outdoor Living uses powder from a top industry brand to paint piece parts and full assemblies. The Brooksville plant uses a leading industry pretreatment solution for aluminum extrusions.
Barrette Outdoor Living’s powder coating operation is complex, with two coating lines at its Brooksville facility. The plant has one automated line and one offline to handle a large variety of parts with many shapes and size. The Brooksville plant has achieved certification from its powder supplier as an approved applicator for a range of powder coatings for architectural systems.
This applicator requires a fully operational quality management system with written procedures and defined record-keeping that makes sure metal pretreatment and powder application processes are carried out consistently and to the required standard. Testing is required at defined intervals and with specific methods to ensure pretreatment consistency, correct curing and required film performance — appearance, film thickness, color, gloss and adhesion — on finished pieces.
The two primary powders that BOL uses are AkzoNobel and Tiger Drylac. The facility uses Bulk Chemicals for its pretreatment. MI Metals, Hydro, Keymark, and Tifton supply aluminum along with several key LME suppliers.
BOL uses Bulk Chemical E-CLPS 2100 chrome-free pretreatment system designed specifically for aluminum substrate, and Akzo Nobel supplies powder coatings that meet the AAMA 2604 performance criteria, which specifies that the aluminum substrate must pass 3000 hours per ASTM B117 procedure.
Barrette Outdoor Living uses a patent chrome-free pretreatment system designed specifically for aluminum substrate, and powder coatings that meet AAMA 2604 performance criteria, which specifies that the aluminum substrate must pass 3000 hours per ASTM B117 procedure.
“With these processes, we have surpassed 10,000 hours in a salt spray chamber, more than triple of what is required by AMAA 2604-20 specifications,” Howison says.
AAMA 2604 Specified and Transferrable Limited Lifetime Warranty
Barrette Outdoor Living’s aluminum products feature a powder coating that meets and exceeds AAMA 2604 specifications by three times the typical requirement for both its process and its powder. The company’s aluminum products also feature one of the best warranties in the industry — a 30-Year Transferrable Limited Lifetime Warranty.
Barrette Outdoor Living caters to both professionals and homeowners through several channels of distribution. The company was established in 1978 when it started selling to consumers via retail stores. Since then, Barrette Outdoor Living has grown considerably and broadened its distribution to online and brick-and-mortar retail outlets, fencing, railing and decking dealers and 2-step distributors.
Acquisitions of companies, manufacturing plants and product categories have established the company as an industry leader and enabled continued growth in outdoor product development and manufacturing.
In late 2020, TorQuest Partners and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) announced a majority investment in Barrette Outdoor Living, Inc. TorQuest and CDPQ partnered in this transaction with Barrette Outdoor Living’s owner, Les Entreprises Barrette Ltée, who retains a significant minority interest in the company and its management team, led by CEO Jean desAutels.
Going forward, Howison says Barrette Outdoor Living will continue to look at opportunities to grow the business through new markets, new products and/or further acquisitions.
Barrette Outdoor Living’s Sustainability Initiatives
Barrette Outdoor Living’s commitment to the environment has recently been at the forefront of several initiatives to promote sustainability throughout its many facilities and throughout its product lines.
The company’s aluminum powder coating process itself is a prime example of its many eco-friendly initiatives. Through the ability to reclaim and reuse 94% of over-sprayed material, Barrette Outdoor Living’s powder coating process generates no hazardous waste at its two aluminum manufacturing facilities.
Barrette Outdoor Living also owns and operates GreenWays, a recycling program for pre- and post-consumer rigid PVC with facilities in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Plant City, Florida. GreenWays partners with individual suppliers to manage the disposal of their scrap materials in an eco-friendly manner.
The results of the program help reduce CO2 emissions, lower greenhouse gases, and decrease landfill waste in local communities. With extrusion capabilities in both facilities, this means 85% of vinyl fencing produced are made from recycled materials reclaimed through GreenWays. The company projects 27 million pounds of scrap is being purchased and recycled annually.
In addition, Barrette Outdoor Living recently completed installation of rooftop solar arrays at its Brooksville, Florida and Galloway, New Jersey manufacturing facilities. The 200,000 square foot solar array in Brooksville was the largest privately-owned solar project in Florida at the time of contract. The array is capable of producing more than 2,352,489 watts DC power that will offset approximately 81% of the facility’s electricity consumption.
The Galloway solar array installation — the largest in its county — sits atop the company’s 400,000 square foot manufacturing facility and offsets 50,000+ tons of CO2 annually and supplies 50% of the facility’s electricity consumption.
At Barrette Outdoor Living’s vinyl extrusion facility in Bulls Gap, Tennessee, 1.5 million pounds of scrap are recycled each month and the plant received the Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award for their exceptional voluntary environmental initiatives that were not required by law or regulation.
For more information, visit www.barretteoutdoorliving.com.
