Frying Pan Alley – the street name conjures a Dicken’s novel and was certainly home to ironmongers and braziers in the past. Now it is the location of Chapter Spitalfields student accommodation block, rising majestically above the busy streets below and far from quaint. It is a stunning state-of-the building, the third tallest student accommodation building in the world, standing 34 floors high, with a fabulous view over the City from the top floor bar.

Powdertech Corby has made significant investment in a dedicated swatches and sample booth to provide clients to with metal swatches of the powder coating shades they are interested in. Going one stage further, clients can send in a piece of their own metal and have it coated and returned as an accurate sample of the final colour they will achieve.

Powdertech Corby has just completed coating over 4500sq m of aluminium cladding panels for Westfield White City Shopping Centre’s £600 million refurbishment and extension. An extensive coating job in itself, the project was one of particular satisfaction for the company. “We created a bespoke powder coating in our Landscape™ range for this flagship project,” said Powdertech Corby Director Richard Besant, “and we, and the customer alike, are delighted with the result.”

Powdertech Corby Ltd has recently finished powder coating a mixed-use apartment building occupying a prominent corner position on Great Portland Street in London’s West End. The street is an interesting mix of small shops, grand eighteenth-century buildings and newer constructions with the imposing architecture of Portland Place and Harley Street nearby. Vabel has designed and built an additional two stories on to the corner building to contain penthouse apartments.

Metal finishing, be it painting, anodising or powder coating, is usually the last process a fabrication will undergo before installation, yet the performance of metal finishing and the effect it can have on the construction process and programme is greatly influenced by early design decisions. Richard Besant, Director at Powdertech Corby, outlines some simple but often overlooked considerations that should be made at the very start of a project.

Powdertech Corby has launched Colour Library, a free service, providing a neat and convenient storage system for colour swatches of different powder coating finishes. Colour Library is a handy reference tool for colour selection and matching, and for recording shades and tones used in different projects.