Guarantees are often considered by specifiers or building owners to provide reassurance about the long-term performance of a surface finish.

In recent years, there has been a trend of extending guarantees for longer and longer periods as a way of outbidding competing surface finishes.

But, guarantees have often been full of exclusions and reservations. Invoking guarantees, often years after the event, frequently involves costly litigation. Further, even if the guarantee is successfully invoked, replacement of defective parts may be impossible without partial demolition of the building.

Where this is not practical, the owner of the building will be simply left with the problem over the long term; legal recourse for aesthetic damage is notoriously difficult to assess. Surface failure may render a building impossible to sell or otherwise seriously blight its open market value.

Historically, quality claims against leading architectural anodisers have been negligible. In the highly unlikely event of a claim, the anodiser alone bears full responsibility for all properties of the anodic layer.

As a result of recent independent surveys of long term on-site performance of anodising - including in polluted and marine environments - a simple, straightforward, unequivocal design life guarantee for anodising is available for the first time, exclusively from United Anodisers. Please contact us at the start of your project to discuss specifications and guarantees required.

Guarantees for organic coatings are not backed by the same site exposure history. For any organic coating, the responsibility for any failure is necessarily divided between the paint manufacturer and the paint applicator. The guarantees available from the manufacturers of polyester powder specifically exclude adhesion.

Guarantees are important, but only if they are simple, straightforward and long term - this is only possible when they can be given backed with the full confidence of proven, long-term, on-site performance.