Alex Budd was offered a job in metal finishing while completing his MBA six years ago, and he realized it might be his calling.

“I had always been interested in industries that are under the radar that you just don't think about,” says Budd, now the owner of the shop he went to work for, Greensboro Industrial Platers, having bought it six years ago from the woman who hired him. “This was perfect. You don't realize how every metal you see is coated in or treated. And it just fascinated me.”

But if you think owning a plating shop at 24 is daunting, realize that Budd took another monumental leap when he recently acquired crosstown rival United Metal Finishing and merged the two companies.

Expanding his company's services and capacity was at the deal's heart. Read the full article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2367-acquisition-helps-greensboro-industrial-platers-grow-footprint

We talk with Elite Metal Finishing's Steve Allen about his challenge of getting the Oceanside, California, shop to attain Nadcap accreditation in chemical processing. In the finishing industry, this effort is not for the faint of heart, especially for someone relatively new.

“ I knew this was going to be a huge challenge,” says Allen, who started at Elite in 2022 after working four years at Tech Plate in Orange, California, a company owned by one of his best friend’s father.

The decision was made to pursue Nadcap—National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program—accreditation in 2023. In late 2024, Elite earned the chemical processing certification after many months of blood, sweat, and tears and following rigorous planning steps.

We talked with Joe Zabielski from Ronatec about the new Paladin high-phos electroless nickel chemistry, which the company says offers outstanding corrosion protection and hardness.

Zabielski says Paladin has passed salt spray tests up to 7500 hours and has plated hardness equivalent to mid-phos baths.

“Paladin is a novel high-phosphorus, electroless nickel process developed to address two key issues when using EN as a coating,” he says. “First and foremost, it is highly corrosion resistant. We have measured salt spray performance over 4130 steel panels past 7,500 hours. That is exceptional as a standard high-phosphate is generally known to plate between 500 to 1,000 hours of salt spray resistance.”