Aluminium systems manufacturer AluK is launching a brand-new colour collection which it says will help trade customers win more business with stronger, more sustainable margins. Working with paint supplier Akzo Nobel, AluK claims to have identified the key trends dominating the retail and commercial markets at the moment, and put together four distinct, highly durable colour ranges in response: Branded Elements, Homestead, Spectrum and Urbane.
The new colour ranges are available on all of AluK’s products, on competitively short lead times, They are designed to give customers a huge advantage when it comes to their sales and logistics operations.
Elements and Homestead are AluK’s powder coated colour ranges for the retail market. Elements features 17 vibrant RAL options in a smooth finish, while Homestead includes 13 classic, warm RAL options in a textured finish.
For the commercial market, AluK’s Spectrum and Urbane ranges combine additional durability with enhanced variations in finish to suit both volume and high-end specifications. There are 21 contemporary textured metallic colours within Spectrum, while Urbane features 14 bolder colours in a smooth, anodic metal finish, which offers a simple and cost-effective alternative to anodising.
All four ranges have been brought together in a stunning new sales brochure that has been printed with fully colour matched samples, so that buyers can see realistic representations of the colours before they place an order. Sioned Roberts, AluK’s marketing director, says that AluK is determined to make the whole process of winning and supplying contracts in coloured profile easier and more profitable for fabricators.
She explained: “We’ve simplified the whole process so that all Elements, Homestead and Spectrum single colour options are priced the same, with an uplift only for dual colours and those from the higher specification Urbane range. We’re still offering our standard gloss white, matt 7016 grey and matt 9005 black options from stock, but we’re now also offering competitive lead times on textured versions of those and all the paint-to-order colours in this entire collection.
“Up until now, our customers seem to have fallen largely into two groups – those who just offer our three standard colours and who are potentially missing out on new business opportunities as a result, and those who try to offer every RAL colour but say that the logistics of that can be costly and complicated. This new colour collection is aimed squarely at both, and is a very deliberate response from AluK to help all our customers use colour as a way to increase margins. It maintains the easy ordering and guaranteed lead times associated with standard products but streamlines the choice of RAL colours and textures to just the most popular options, drastically simplifying the logistics.”
She adds: “There is a misconception in the market that colour in aluminium just means anthracite grey, when in fact that only accounts for a proportion of sales driven by what has been most popular over recent years. Other colours are increasingly coming to the fore as market demand shifts, and AluK has plenty of alternative grey and black options in the new collection as well as on-trend shades of brown, blue, green and cream.
“As you’d expect, Elements and Homestead are very much in line with the paint colours made popular by certain high-end paint manufacturers, while Spectrum and Urbane reflect the colours, textures and finishes dominating the commercial market at the moment.” AluK’s new colour collection is available on a competitive lead time but all the other RAL colours remain available to order separately. More details are available online at www.alukgb.com/colour.
