Windows & Doors

Windows for Down Under

Photos: Photo courtesy of Viridian. Photography by Peter Hyatt and Paarhammer Windows & Doors
Photos: Photo courtesy of Viridian. Photography by Peter Hyatt and Paarhammer Windows & Doors
Photos: Photo courtesy of Viridian. Photography by Peter Hyatt and Paarhammer Windows & Doors
Photos: Photo courtesy of Viridian. Photography by Peter Hyatt and Paarhammer Windows & Doors
Photos: Photo courtesy of Viridian. Photography by Peter Hyatt and Paarhammer Windows & Doors
Edith and Tony Paarhammer. Photos: Photo courtesy of Viridian. Photography by Peter Hyatt and Paarhammer Windows & Doors

Sometimes the paints from ADLER take a long trip. What is probably the furthest destination where coatings from Tyrol are processed! It is Australia! Yes, that's right, the country down under whose name is often confused with Austria. The country with the kangaroos. Koalas. And crocodiles. Where, coincidentally, the very first export from the ADLER-Werk Lackfabrik landed: in 1958 we sent paint rollers half way round the world to Australia. Today, nearly 60 years later, deliveries are regularly shipped a long way – to Paarhammer Windows & Doors, one of the leading window manufacturers on the fifth continent.

New Window Territory

How this collaboration came about is a really interesting story: courage and a thirst for adventure attracted young Edith, from Tyrol, and her husband Tony, from Upper Austria, to Australia in 1990: jobs were scarce and so Tony, a master carpenter, set up a joinery.

"In the beginning we made furniture, but we weren't able to live off that. So we started with kitchens," says Edith Paarhammer. When it came to building their own house, however, the Austrians realised to their amazement that no tilt and turn windows could be found anywhere in Australia, not to mention double glazing: "Even though in parts of the country it snows in winter and in summer the temperatures get above 40 degrees," the young couple marvelled. So Tony got hold of wood and glass himself and made his own windows. "From then on we always took a window with us to kitchen trade fairs," Edith reports. And lo and behold: slowly but surely, the demand for "Windows made by Austrians" increased. These days there are no more kitchens at Paarhammer Windows & Doors in Ballan, Victoria, in the south of Australia. Yet they do have the highest quality and most energy efficient windows in the country.

Windows Francesco

The company is well known for finding the right solutions even for extraordinary projects. Oversize windows? Custom-made products? Construction sites 2000 kilometres away? No problem for Paarhammer! After the big forest fires in 2009, Paarhammer was the first company to develop fire-resistant windows. No wonder that the 4000-m² workshop first moved into in 2010 has already had to be extended twice. The latest addition to the Paarhammer stable is called Francesco. This is how the workforce christened the Finiture spraying robot after the nice Italian man who installed it.

And this is also how ADLER came into play. "We had already used paints from ADLER in the mid-nineties. Back then, however, we had to buy these from an agent in New Zealand (we at ADLER still wonder today how our paints got there ☺)" says Edith. A complicated, tedious affair, which therefore fizzled out.

  
Yet at the window fair in Nuremberg there was a reunion in 2015. "We were given very good sales advice and after a visit to Schwaz, it was clear to us that we had found a great partner in ADLER. Orders work really great and ADLER is a progressive operation, which is always able to come up with improvements and innovations," praises Edith. Particularly as the requirements in Australia are quite special: "The surfaces here are exposed to very large temperature fluctuations and we also use very hard timbers." Yet with ADLER it is possible to produce wonderful surfaces. Just the right thing for the extraordinary Paarhammer projects that are also worth seeing – from the Park Hyatt Hotel in Sydney to the Saffire Resort in Tasmania!

www.paarhammer.com.au

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