Innovative | with Darryl Mac, AGP Account Manager

Darryl sits down with Simon Farrell-Green, editor of HERE magazine, to discuss how innovation enables AGP to be New Zealand's leading double-glazing manufacturer. High performance glass requires innovation from the manufacturing facility and processes, to the seamless distribution and installation, hear from Darryl about how that looks like at AGP. 

00:00 Introduction  
00:37 Darryl’s Introduction  
01:39 200 years of New Zealand glass experience at AGP  
02:16 What does AGP do to ensure your products perform as they’re meant to?  
03:21 Why has glass become so important in recent years?  
04:05 How would you describe H1 for the uninitiated?  
04:52 About the AGP system and why it was such a game-changer  
05:47 What do glass systems mean for people sitting inside their homes?  
06:20 Inside the AGP factory  
07:15 What did it mean for turnaround and speed once the APL system came online?  
07:54 What do you see happening in the future for AGP glass?

🎙️ 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.

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“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
• 0:37 Darryl’s Introduction
• 1:39 200 years of New Zealand glass experience at AGP
• 2:16 What does AGP do to ensure your products perform as they’re meant to?
• 3:21 Why has glass become so important in recent years?
• 4:05 How would you describe H1 for the uninitiated?
• 4:52 About the AGP system and why it was such a game-changer
• 5:47 What do glass systems mean for people sitting inside their homes?
• 6:20 Inside the AGP factory
• 7:15 What did it mean for turnaround and speed once the APL system came online?
• 7:54 What do you see happening in the future for AGP glass?

Transcript

0:00

Kyoto, I'm Simon Farrell Greene and I'm the editor of Hair Magazine. Welcome to New Zealand made, a series of podcasts we're making with our friends at APL Windows 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 building? To answer this, we're chatting with some experts in the latest developments in building tech and a few other issues as well. I'm joined now by Darryl Mack from AGP. Welcome Darryl. Okay, please spare. So we're going to start by, you're going to tell us what you do and why you do it in 50 words or less. I think I can get a lot less than that. What I do, I basically do account management for AGP, so looking after the fabric adders and just the connection between our production facility and the glass end of site, I've been in the glass industry for around 40 odd years. So you'd say it's part of the blood, but I've always been very passionate about the industry. I enjoy working in it. I've worked for different companies over the years, but had the opportunity to work to join AGP about five years ago in the early days. I know quite a few of the guys from AGP. It's a place that's got a lot of passion, a lot of desire to actually be the best. We all know each other pretty well. We've got a lot of glass experience, a lot of knowledge, and it's a fun place to be producing your fantastic product. I think you said before, there's something like two, more than 200 years of New Zealand glass experience. Yeah, there's a bunch of us who've been in the industry a long time, couple of us around 40 odd years, and then the rest range from 10 up. So in our sort of sales, management type team, there's around just over 200 years of glass experience, most of it in New Zealand. So a very real position to know the New Zealand market, understand the history, what's gone wrong, what we can do better. And the team's very, very passionate about performing the best. Every order gives you the right for the next order. So it's very, yeah, a lot of passion, a lot of drivers. It's great place to be. We've all seen the issues in the New Zealand building industry when things aren't done well. What does AGP do to ensure that your products will perform the way that they're meant to? I think the difference with AGP is a lot of due diligence was done when the plant was set up to make sure we got the products right, the systems right, the equipment right. We test all our double glass units, they go into the wider system over in Europe. We believe we found the toughest testing facility in the world, we use that. We also test twice what's required over twice what's required in the New Zealand industry. Like, yeah, if you have to test every two years, we test every year. Internally, we have a heap of processes from the start to the finish to all along the long to make sure quality is number one. Each operator has a bunch of checks have to be able to set up, we've got a bunch of process engineers that check process to make sure we're doing it right. If we do have an issue in the market, whether it's an issue with jobs, we fix them pretty quickly, we go root cause, we find out what went wrong, we fix it at the root cause that doesn't happen again. We kind of forget glass is there, but why has it become so important in recent years? I think the biggest change is when H1 came in, which is basically making homes more comfortable, more airtight, more easy to live in, more healthy in a lot of ways. So glass all of a sudden got went from a single glass world to double glazing and as that's moved on, double glazing's bored in low-emissity coatings to make your house more comfortable. And that's where it's really come in, so you've got any house near where glass is such a big part of it. And like in the APL window systems, there's more glass and there's aluminium, so it becomes critical part of the system, which is why the group is invested in the glass industry. To have that complete system that puts the package together, the best we can do. Briefly, what you mentioned H1, just for the uninitiated, how do you describe what that is? Basis, an installation code. You've got to have your house, it's got to have a certain thermal resistance to keep it comfortable in a certain way, and that's what it is. It's about your walls, your insulation, your roofs, your insulation, your roofs, and then your glass being double glazed with argon and stuff like that, so you can get that will best performance. And as you say, you've got some big openings that glass is forming a large part of the building envelope. Yeah, a massive part of it, and when you're talking real but large but it's a glass going into frames like, you know, with a minima type system, you go into a solox, what we've got a product called solox ultra, which is really good at stocking a solid heat gain, so you're still comfortable inside your house even on a really, really hot sunny day. Tell us what the AGP system is and why it was such a game changer. Well, the AGP system starts what we call with ATS or our architectural thermal spacer, which is the the part that goes between the two bits of glass when they're made into a double glass unit, so that system has a best gas retention of any system in the world today, so what that means is if you're putting argon gas inside a double glass unit, the argon gas will stay longer. What it does is it enables us to give the best warranty, longest warranty in the New Zealand market, and also we believe it will outlast any other system in the country if it's maintained correctly. It's also combined with the glass, the two bits of glass. One of them will be a low E glass, what we call a solox product. Solox E and solox ultra, low emissivity glasses, designed to keep the house warmer and the winter months, but also to help control solox heat gain. The solox ultra is the upgrade product that will really help that solox heat gain. I think a lot of the time these things can get quite abstract, right? Like we've got to do it because the government says we're trying to reduce our climate emissions or whatever. What does some of these systems mean for comfort for people sitting inside their houses? If you've ever lived in a house with double glazing, particularly with high performing double glazing, it's a massive difference. It's just warm, it's comfortable. We talk about the Northern European types homes in Scandinavia where it's minus 20 outside and you come inside and it's warm because the houses are insulated properly. We're trying to create some of that and then use it to suit New Zealand climates. Tell us a bit about the AGP factory. It's pretty exciting stuff. Yeah, it's a really cool factory. It's big. I think you know, I know it's been down the motorway towards Cambridge where it's located. It's going to see how big it is because quite often people will go past and go, wow, what is that? The factory itself is it's climate control, green star building. It's really comfortable work and you know, some people go near the winter. They might come out of the cold, Cambridge, sort of the air, and they've got their jackets busy on. You go inside and it's people just walk around like this because it's really comfortable inside. Unique part of their factory and probably world leading is it's the first time a plant's been designed around the way it is because we designed the plant, how it was going to run, what it was going to do, then the building was actually designed around the plant. So that's unique and I think Lyseq who's the major supplier, one of the AGP suppliers in the world rated that as one of the best they've seen. They use it as a model to show other clients. What did it mean for turnaround and speed once the system came online? But I guess I'm thinking a bit in terms of the broader APL system. Well, I think what it did is it's enabled the APL fabricators in the market to rely on their glass tuning up on time and speak and full-size speak. So like, you know, we deliver, you know, 99 sort of percent throughout the country and we have done since they go and the company's very focused on ensuring that. So we've in the plant, we've actually increased capacity twice in the first five years we've been in business basically and that's just to make sure we stay in front of the market. That's brilliant. What do you see happening in the future in terms of in terms of AGP glass? Well, exciting stuff. AGP glass will keep going from strength to strength because we, you know, we set a benchmark of where we're going to be and we'll maintain that. The interesting part is going to be what sort of technology comes into glass. Like we partner with two of the leading glass producers of the world in AGC and Guardian and they've got a bunch of guys looking at developing different coding techniques for colour, for performance and we try and put a New Zealand sway on to that and we push them to actually get products that suit the New Zealand market rather than just a northern European type market. That's great. Hey, thanks, Darryl. Pleasure. That was Darryl Mack from AGP speaking to us as part of our New Zealand made podcast series with APL Windows Solutions.