Product History

DECRA Roofing Systems has a captivating history dating back to World War II. Frequent bombings on British soil by the German Luftwaffe produced an urgent need to reconstruct many buildings quickly and easily out of makeshift materials. The most common material used were sheets of corrugated metal.

While the corrugated metal provided a quick remedy to reconstruct damaged buildings, evening bombing raids continued to be menacing. The Luftwaffe dropped flairs to help illuminate the bombing runs. Since the new buildings were made of a shiny reflective metal, they became easy targets because theyilluminated the bombsite. The problem was compounded during the war years, because the use of oil-based paint to protect and camouflage buildings was impossible to obtain outside military applications.

The British government had to find a company to develop an alternative protective coating material. The new substance had to be applied to both new and existing steel and corrugated iron structures and provide camouflage. Industrial chemists from the Decraspray Company of Kent, England alleviated the problem by developing an emulsion coating from coal products. The Decramastic branded chemical emulsion claimed to be "acid-proof and chemical-fume proof, [with]… a very high resistance to water vapour."

Throughout the war Decramastic emulsion protected valuable food storage depots that were critical to achieving victory. In the years following the war, various attempts were made to remove the functional coating, which had served its purpose, in favor of more stylish alternatives. However, the coating had bonded with the steel so well that removal was virtually impossible. With evidence that the underlying metal had been well preserved, many re-evaluated its potential for continued commercial use. During the post-war years, the black protective coating was used on many public buildings, and industrial building contractors were demanding that new iron sheeting be treated with Decramastic.Early in 1954, Mr. L.J. Fisher was perusing an English trade magazine in his New Zealand home, when an advertisement for the Decramastic product caught his eye. Working from the assumption that a factory-produced local equivalent would almost certainly prove to be an extremely saleable domestic product in New Zealand, he flew to England to acquire the rights to manufacture and sell to markets outside the United Kingdom.

In a subsequent trip to England, Mr. Fisher met a man named Ben Booth. Mr. Booth was a talented artist and during the war, used his skills to paint imaginary buildings as a diversion on the grass landing strips used by the Royal Air Force. The view from the air deceived the German bombers to look elsewhere for landing strips to target. He too, had seen the ill effects of shiny metal buildings illuminated by dropped flares from German attack planes.

However, Mr. Booth’s solution to protecting and camouflaging corrugated metal buildings during the war was quite different. Instead of using a Decramastic spray, he painted the shiny corrugated metal buildings with road tar and sprinkled crushed stone chips on top. After the war, demolition began on the temporary structures. Mr. Booth was surprised by the excellent condition of the buildings. He also had the basis for a business in Britain. Mr. Booth began advertising a roofing and cladding product made of metal, covered in tar, and bonded with stone chips.

Mr. Fisher’s newly found recognition that the Decramastic coating had strong holding power made him recall the stone chip finish he had seen in Britain with Mr. Booth. The idea germinated into a new roofing product that would combine the strength and durability of steel with the lasting protection of a stone chip finish on the exterior. If the metal could be stamped into any shape, it could be the basis for various types of roofing profiles—tile, shake, and shingle all suddenly became possible.

The Decramastic coating has since been replaced with a much stronger acrylic basecoat. Utilizing an acrylic technology has allowed DECRA products to withstand some of the harshest climates worldwide. Over the years, DECRA Roofing Systems has made advancements in production, styles, col