The Finish Line

James Simonelli’s is executive director of the Metal Finishers Association of California, a role he assumed on January 1. Simonelli’s leadership comes at a time when collaboration across the metals industry has become essential. Over the past several years, companies have increasingly joined both MFAC and the California Metals Coalition, where he has spent much of his career advocating for the bro...

Jason Brassard is the owner of Brapsard Powder Coating in Franklin, New Hampshire, and grew his powder coating business the same way many others have: a small setup, a lot of trial and error, and a passion that quickly outgrew the garage. When Brassard was approached by a friend to help him remember his late brother, he developed an unusual way to immortalize loved ones through his craft: embeddin...

James DeDeus is President of JMD Industries in New Hampshire, which recently acquired Massachusetts’ Patriot Coatings. The Patriot Coatings acquisition, finalized at the end of 2025, represents the most significant expansion in JMD Industries’ nearly 50-year history.  JMD Industries’ roots trace back to 1977, when the company was founded in Lawrence, Massachusetts, by DeDeus’s parents. In its earl...

Stephen Walters is CEO of Progressive Coating, a Chicago-area job shop that has evolved from a thermoplastic coating specialist into a multi-process supplier supporting automotive, electrical infrastructure, and electric vehicle markets across North America. That performance-first mindset has guided Progressive Coatings through more than four decades of operation—and through one of the most ambiti...

Dallas Cooley is Chief Servant and CEO at Georgia Powder Coating in Gainesville, Georgia, a company approaching its 27th year in business and prepares for a facility expansion that will more than double its footprint. For Georgia Powder Coating, the decision to prioritize customer experience was not based on industry precedent. In fact, there was little to draw from within manufacturing itself. In...

Stephen Sharretts is the CEO and third-generation leader of Sharretts Plating in York, Pennsylvania, an electroplating operation that has lasted 100 years and weathered the industry’s many storms. Founded in 1925 as Charles D. Snyder and Son, Inc., the company has evolved from a small polishing and repair shop in Harrisburg into a cutting-edge surface finishing operation serving global industries....

Natalia Stephen is owner of Compound Metal Coatings and CEO and Owner of PVD Advanced Technologies, both located in Ontario, Canada, and looks forward to her 25th anniversary in 2026. Stephen founded CMC in 2001, after a career that took her from her birthplace in Romania to college and her first job in South Africa, where she sold chemistry supplies, and eventually to Canada, where she was on the...

Marko Duffy is Managing Director at TDF Metal Finishing in Danvers, Massachusetts. He took the job in 2021 after a lengthy career on the supplier side of the finishing business and has transformed the once family-owned company in just a little over four years. Duffy has helped the shop, founded in 1984, become accredited by the National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program and h...

Imran Shamsi is Vice President at Premier Metal Processing in San Diego, which offers anodizing, electrolytic nickel, bright tin, chemfilm, electroless nickel, electropolish, passivation, and zinc to customers across various industries.  The company serves customers in the aerospace and defense, medical, electronics, oil and gas, connectors, microwave, nuclear, automotive, and commercial sectors....

Mark Morris is President of J&M Plating in Rockford, Illinois, which is a large fastener coating and small stamping operation. It has 220,000 square feet of production space, offering one-stop finishing services, and is ISO 9001:2015 quality certified. Its heat-treating and plating laboratories are ISO/IEC 17025:2005 accredited for mechanical testing. J&M Plating has been one of the top zi...

John Cutchin got his start in the finishing industry at 18, when he would bronze baby shoes in his hometown in Easley, South Carolina. Cutchin went on to start Palmetto Plating in 1964 to provide metal finishing services to the textile industries, and has enjoyed a successful career ever since. Read more about him at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2612-legends-john-cutchin-palme...

Adam Thomas, Vice President of the family-owned company R.J. Thomas Manufacturing. is a Cherokee, Iowa, manufacturer of Pilot Rock park equipment that was founded in 1959. The addition of an upgraded powder coating system has been on R.J. Thomas Manufacturing’s to-do list for some time, and especially since business has been growing for the last several years. The company has been designing and ma...

Jo’Van Wiggins is the Chief Operations Officer of EMI Quality Plating in Evansville, Indiana, a 50,000-square-foot business that is central to many manufacturing operations in the U.S. EMI specializes in silver, gold, and nickel plating; certified welding inspection; and additional specialty plating processes, including palladium, diamond coatings, low-, mid-, and high-phos nickel, as well as elec...

Since 2017, Doug Orantes and his wife, Loida, have been trying to get Aero Plating in Lancaster, California, off the ground. Still, a miscommunication with local city officials derailed those plans until he was finally able to realize his dream of opening the doors in 2023. “It’s been a long wait,” Orantes says. “But it has been very much worth it.” Today, Aero Plating operates in an 8,500-square-...

Jim Leidig is the General Manager of Matrix Finishing in Harrington, Delaware. For the last year, Leidig has had the dream job of designing and building — and now running —a hi-tech powder coating operation that would be the envy of any finishing applicator in the land. When it came time to buy the equipment needed to run the 65,000-square-foot facility, it was Leidig’s bosses who insisted that he...

Ashley and Jason Hunsaker are owners of HTS Coatings in Madison, Illinois, which offers thermal spray coating for corrosion protection. HTS Coatings is expanding and growing not only as a coating shop but also as a machining and grinding facility. They market themselves as a full-service thermal spray, grinding, machining, and welding facility that specializes in preventing corrosion- and erosion-...

Guillermo Aguilera and Brenda Tapia are owners of Metal Chem in Chatsworth, California, a shop that offers chem film, passivation, anodizing, electroless nickel, zinc, and phosphate conversion on the plating side, as well as Mil-Specs, urethanes, epoxy, and polyester hybrids on the powder coating side, in addition to liquid coatings. Metal Chem also provides conformal coatings for printed circuit...

Jeffrey Rubin is President of Testrite, a manufacturer of visual display products located in Hackensack, New Jersey.  After decades of wishful thinking about bringing powder coating in-house, in 2025, Jeffrey and his father, Larry, the CEO of Testrite, are finally up and running with their own powder coating line, following years of outsourcing the work to an external shop. Testrite integrates gra...

Park Kersman is President of Lorin Industries, which he purchased from his family in 2006. His grandfather founded the Muskegon, Michigan coil and batch anodizer in 1943, which has over 400,000 square feet of space. Lorin Industries has collaborated with some of the most prestigious names in architecture, design, and construction, and the Michigan company has quickly established a reputation in th...

Gary Burton has spent over 50 years in the metal finishing industry, working on all sides of the spectrum, including as an applicator and with suppliers. Burton returned to his roots in running plating operations when he joined G.W. Lisk in 2010 as a plater and chemist, a role he still holds today. Burton graduated from Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1962 with a degree in...

Carl Troiano is owner of Trojan Powder Coating, which has facilities in Florida and New York. He was  recently honored by the Fenestration and Glazing Industry Alliance (FGIA) for over 20 years of service, including many as a committee member of the FGIA Architectural Aluminum Handling, Cleaning, and Maintenance Task Group and now as a member of the Board of Directors. Troiano is also president of...

We chat with James Lindsay, Ph. D., a retired research engineer from General Motors who has volunteered for numerous surface finishing industry groups over the past several decades. Dr. Lindsay received the National Association for Surface Finishing Presidential Award at the organization’s 2018 Sur/Fin conference for his years of contribution to the finishing industry and to the various organizati...

We had a chance to talk with Bob Bertelsen, owner of A Plus Powder Coaters in Northeast Ohio. When Bertelsen began A Plus Powder Coaters, he envisioned a simple production shop with possibly a conveyor line and a batch system. The company's growth has even impressed him. “I thought maybe eventually do media blasting, a handful of people, and I envisioned it getting to maybe 40,000 square feet...

Keshav Kumar is owner of Plateronics Processing in Chatsworth, California, which offers anodizing, chem film passivation, electroless nickel, and various other plating substrates, including gold, silver, tin, and zinc. Kumar purchased the company five years ago because of its diversity in application processes.  ”We have tried to stick into the more technologically advanced areas where we can add...

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 perf...