Reliable | with Bryce Imms, AGP Account Manager

Bryce sits down with Simon Farrell-Green, editor of HERE magazine, to discuss what makes AGP products so reliable for New Zealanders. 'We're only as good as our last order' summarises the continuously high standard AGP keep when manufacturing glass, tune in to hear how they do just that.

00:00 Introduction  
00:33 Bryce’s Introduction  
01:21 How is AGP different?  
01:59 How does the AGP system ensure quality?  
02:58 What’s unique about the product you deliver?  
03:35 How does your quality control work?  
04:26 How does the AGP system cope with regional demands and conditions?  
05:35 What impact does AGP have once you get on site?

🎙️ About the Series – Made here, for you
Made here, for you is a storytelling series by APL & AGP, shining a light on the people, places, and processes behind New Zealand-made windows and doors. Every episode captures the craft, care, and Kiwi ingenuity that make our products truly local and built to last.

🏠 Explore Our Brands
• Altherm Window Systems
• First Windows & Doors
• Vantage Windows & Doors

🌿 Proudly NZ-Made
From design to delivery, every window system is created here in Aotearoa supporting local manufacturing, innovation, and communities nationwide.

💬 Connect with Us
LinkedIn YouTube Instagram Facebook

Produced by APL. All rights reserved.
“Made here, for you” stories of New Zealand-made windows and doors, told by the people who bring them to life.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:33 Bryce’s Introduction
• 1:21 How is AGP different?
• 1:59 How does the AGP system ensure quality?
• 2:58 What’s unique about the product you deliver?
• 3:35 How does your quality control work?
• 4:26 How does the AGP system cope with regional demands and conditions?
• 5:35 What impact does AGP have once you get on site?

Transcript

0:00

Kia ora, I'm Simon Farrell Green and I'm the editor of Hear magazine. Welcome to New Zealand Made, a series of podcasts we're making with our friends at APL Window Solutions. The question we're asking is essentially, what does it mean to build or renovate in an increasingly global and interconnected world? And how do we balance a desire to reduce carbon emissions and improve the performance of our buildings, with the ever increasing cost of doing so? To answer this, we're chatting with some experts on the latest developments and building tech and a few other issues as well. I'm joined now by Brysims from AGP. Welcome, Brys. Thank you. No pressure, but tell us who you are, what you do and why you do it and you've got 50 words or less. Yeah, thanks. My name's Brys. I'm an account manager for AGP. I've been in the industry for 24 years this year. I started at a apprenticeship level. I work my way through and through the years of experience, I have come to AGP as an account manager. Main focus is looking after our residential fabricators throughout the Apple North Island and I guess from my experience on sites throughout the years, that works well with our fabricators on site for their experience, installations, glazing difficult jobs from small cabins all the way through to high and architectural homes. You've been in the industry a long time and you've seen, as you say, all parts of it. How is AGP different? When I first started in glass, the standards was single glazing. I used to cut single glazing a lot for fabricators back in the day. Fast, four to three years, we're now a standardly high performance lowee double glazing, sometimes triple. A lot of difference between the two. Single glazing, you can be a little bit more rough with it. High performance lowee scratches very easily. You have to be very, very careful to have a very good product. Customers are going to look through their glass and have a nice view. So how does the AGP system ensure that those units arrive in good condition or perfect condition, doing all the things they need to do? Our two products, our soloxy and soloxyltra, they are the main two products that go through our factory. If you touch with your thumb, you're going to leave a print on them. They're having high automation with limited people touching the glass. That's the key point. Having high scanners that can scan the glass quality, a rejecting internally to make sure that you're not adding value to something that's going to be rejected, whether it's internally doing our customers or to their customers. That just adds cost further down the track. So high automation, scanners, our AGP ATS system, which ensures a very, very good seal with our IGUs, eliminates a lot of the factors that's been in the industry in the past that can help flow on to a nice, smooth transition. What's unique about the product you deliver? Our service, lead time and quality is what we strive on. Our service to our customer. The quality knowing that we are having a good quality product, unit going out first time, every time. Low reject rates, very, very low external reject rates. I guess that's what's unique about the AGP system, is that we deliver on time, whether from our early days of starting up to now, we're pumping thousands units out every day. The quality does not change. It's always high. The service does not change. Always high. I think anyone who's been through a home builder or you talk to a home builder, it's often the glass that caused the headaches. How does your quality control guide against that? For sure. Last thing you want is to have organised with cranes, installers, glazias, subtrades out of the way, and then the glass doesn't turn up. That's going to be a high cost for any builders, isn't it? Also, put it down the track. It adds cost to the builder as well. So, ensuring that we have high quality standards inside our factory, having high service levels, manufacturing early to allow a dispatching team to consolidate, pre-organise with the customers of what time they're going to be there, to ensure that we are going to be on time with the cyclasing. And, for, that the fabricators can have their windows glazed, the glazias can glaze straight away without any delays. So, I mean, New Zealand's got a wide range of climates and conditions, and I think we've probably always thought that, you know, the one to design for was, you know, winter and central otago. How does it, the AGP system cope with all the differences we have through the country? Yeah, well, you're right. New Zealand does have a unique weather climate system, comparison to other parts of the world. And one to time, you can get pretty cold if you're down south. Even down south, you can get quite hot in summer. And also up in the north, it does get quite, quite warm in summer as well. AGP has designed and sourced products, low ease of soloxy and soloxyltra to deal with it, whether it's a residential home, with a sort of high-end architectural home. We've got products that can deal with overheating as well. In the past, everyone thought grey was the answer. Problem with grey is that you've got a nice architectural home, and winter time, overcast, very dark and gloomy. With our soloxyltra, high-light content, and also produces a lot of heat as well, forms just the same or better than a grey. So that's how we've responded and keep moving forward with technologies. So wrap all this up. What's the impact of this once you get to site? What is the impact that the AGP has? Again, it comes down to doing it once and doing it right. Again, we focus on service and quality. We only believe that we are as good as our last order. We work as a whole team inside the factory to ensure that we have the highest standards that we do, to ensure that we have the reliability that we do. So again, coming on site and installing on site with glasses fully in spec, dirt once dirt right, and not coming back to doing it again twice. That was Brice M's from AGP, talking to us as part of the New Zealand made podcast series with APL Window Solutions. Thanks, Brice. You're welcome. Thank you.