Long-term assured performance against wood decay or threat of fire is the most important factor for specifiers, treatment companies, merchants and users of preservative and fire retardant treated timbers.
There is also now a growing requirement to add to these credentials with a choice of reliable colour options at the treatment stage. Working with leading timber industry partners, Lonza Wood Protection is offering new, high-performance colour technologies for treated timber markets.
We have seen a real interest growth from our customers in wanting to offer colour ¬finishes to both their preservative and fire retardant timbers. They want to further differentiate their products by offering fashionable, initial colour treatments that add real value to the end user. We now have some new and exciting treatment additions to suit fencing, cladding and landscaping markets. Further developing a technology used in our American markets, TanaShades is a pre-treatment colour system for use with TANALITH wood preservative. A water-based, pigmented product, TanaShades is first applied as a simple coating to surfaces of clean fencing, decking or cladding softwood timbers.
Available in in a range of black, greys and browns, TanaShades is quick to dry as an excellent coverage translucent finish and the timbers are then high pressure TANALITH treated in the normal way. The coating allows the usual penetration of the preservative into the timbers and various colour options of timbers can all be treated in a single treatment. The pigmented TanaShade product gives excellent colour durability performance of 2-3 years depending upon exposure. Hoppings Softwood Products has been one of the first companies to realise the potential of TanaShade with its Q range of timbers. “We thoroughly tested the product to achieve the correct dilution and colours to suit our customers’ expectations and we worked with Lonza’s marketing team to develop our own Q-Shades brand of cladding, fencing and decking treated timber components,” said Adam Pulfer, marketing director of Hoppings.
“The interest has been fantastic with many of our merchant customers taking stocks and reporting excellent sales. The product has also been recognised as a finalist in this year’s TTJ Awards product innovation and excellence in marketing award categories.” Total Panel Plus is another colour technology innovation helping to provide a combined stain protection and colour option to the fencing market. Developed alongside Protek Products, this controlled, single stage dip treatment combines the proven stain protection of Lonza’s Antiblu Select preservative with a choice of pigmented colours for pre-fabricated fencing panels. “We needed a reliable and proven short term protection and colour system for fence panels going into stock at merchant and retail outlets,” explained Ben Thornborough of Protek.
“Total Panel Plus, available in a range of colours, is proving the perfect solution. The anti-stain protection sits in the background with a consistent and reliable result and the pigmented colours can be used at various concentrations to give a flexible range of colour options lasting around two seasons.”
In terms of fire retardant treated cladding timbers, specifiers are increasingly looking for easy to maintain colour finishes to both interior or external cladding projects.
“The coating needs to look good, adhere well to timber surfaces, give low and simple maintenance requirements and, critically, not affect the fire retardant protection already built into the timbers,” added Jacqui Hughes, Lonza’s fire retardants technical manager. “Working with Dresser Mouldings and Drywood Coatings we have developed high-performance coating technologies suitable for textured surface cladding timbers which are added as factory-controlled applications after initial fire treatment.”
“DRYWOOD Woodstain for NON-COM Exterior timbers and DRYWOOD Firestain for DRICON treated timbers now provide an exciting range of water-based coatings in both opaque, semi-opaque and translucent finishes that give specifiers, merchants, contractors and Lonza new, high performance colour options when required. They have been fully tested to confirm that the coatings maintain the Euroclass B or C fire performance achieved with the initial impregnation treatments.”
Other colour technology developments include a new grey addition to our existing browns of the TANATONE range of dye-based colours for use with TANALITH treated fencing and landscaping timber treatments. Add to this new greys for our RESISTOL Mainl and Europe dipping treatments and we now offer a flexible portfolio of colour technologies to suit customers’ markets.
