PMS contacted Anglia Decor to assess and quote areas of their building where the existing cladding spraying had failed. Sections of the wall showed visible peeling, flaking, and bare metal exposure — a common picture on older profiled metal cladding that has not been maintained with the correct coating system. The solution was not just a different colour. It was a fundamentally different chemistry.
Why standard exterior paint is the wrong product
Profiled metal cladding has two characteristics that defeat ordinary exterior paint over time:
- Thermal movement. Metal cladding expands and contracts measurably across the daily and seasonal temperature range. Standard exterior paints are essentially rigid film systems — they cannot stretch with the substrate, so they crack at the points of greatest movement, normally the profiled ridges. Once cracked, water gets in behind, and the coating starts to peel.
- Hairline substrate cracks. Older cladding develops fine surface cracks in the original factory coating long before it fails visibly. A standard paint laid over them simply replicates the cracks within months. There is no bridging mechanism in the chemistry.
The result is exactly the failure pattern we found on the PMS building — peeling at the profile peaks, bare metal exposed at the worst points, and a coating life measured in a couple of years rather than a decade.
Access and preparation
We hired a 21-metre cherry picker to reach the upper elevations and arranged scaffold access to a section of the building not reachable by MEWP. Preparation began with a degrease and pressure wash to remove flaking coating, dirt, and surface contaminants. The cladding was then rubbed down by hand and machine to remove all loose material and create a sound, clean substrate. Where bare metal was exposed, a rust-inhibiting primer was applied to halt further corrosion before the topcoat stage.
The Noxyde specification
The cladding was finished with 2 coats of Noxyde in white, achieving a dry film thickness of 400 microns. Noxyde is a high-build elastomeric coating engineered specifically for metal cladding and roofing substrates. Two properties make it the right answer where standard paint fails:
- Elasticity. The cured film is properly elastic, accommodating the thermal movement in profiled metal panels rather than cracking under it.
- Crack bridging. The high-build film bridges the hairline substrate cracks that defeat ordinary paint, sealing them properly rather than telegraphing them through.
The 400-micron DFT delivers a robust, weather-resistant barrier that significantly outperforms standard exterior paints on metal substrates. The expected service life is in the 10–15 year bracket before any recoating is needed.
The result and the lesson
Anglia Decor completed the PMS refurbishment within 2 weeks. The building was brought back to a fully protected and professional standard, with the failed coating completely removed and replaced with a system actually designed for the substrate.
The wider lesson holds for any owner of metal-clad industrial property: the coating chemistry has to match the substrate behaviour. If a previous repaint has failed within a couple of years, the answer is rarely a different colour of the same product. It is normally the wrong product class entirely.
Read the PMS cladding case study or speak to our cladding spraying team about the right specification for your building.