Evonik at the European Coatings Show 2009

Evonik Industries is exhibiting a wide range of products and solutions for the international coating market at this year's European Coatings Show in Nuremberg. With high-quality coating components and industry-specific expertise, Evonik currently generates approximately 14 percent of its sales in the Chemicals Business Area. About 4 percent of sales revenues are plowed back into research for new coating raw materials and technologies, with R&D focusing on the development of additives, raw materials, coloring systems, and resins for advanced environmentally compatible systems. These include, for example, nano-modified raw materials for scratch-resistant coating systems. The area of coatings is therefore an important and highly promising market of the future for the company in the chemicals sector.

The international coatings market is increasingly globally organized, with a few large suppliers in competition with one another. The market share of the large coatings companies increases from year to year. Global sales revenues in the coatings market are currently in the region of €80 billion and have grown by about one quarter since the year 2000.

Coating problems? Evonik to the rescue!

The products developed by Evonik are to be found in the most diverse areas of application in everyday life. Binders, for example, are major components of coatings and essential to their structural stability, thus ensuring the required durability. They are used in the metal components of building facades, for example in profiled sheeting for factory buildings, and as design elements in high-end architectural construction. Evonik also produces some of these binders in the plants recently established in China under the MATCH project.

Evonik additives are present in almost all coated products on the market, such as cell phones, refrigerators, and cars. These additives allow the coating to be applied uniformly and ensure better adhesion of the coated films on plastic or metal parts. Evonik's TEGO products make an important contribution here; further details of these products and of others mentioned below are available in the press kit.

In the area of coloring, Evonik's color blending systems make it possible to adjust a coating to any desired hue using only a few basic colors. The principle is the same as for color production in an inkjet printer. Any conceivable hue can be mixed at the point of sale— in a DIY store, for example—in a matter of minutes. The advantage for distributors is obvious: They need stock only the basic colors. Evonik offers the COLORTREND^® product series for this purpose, and the expertise of Evonik's color experts has also flowed into the POLYTREND^® series.

Crosslinkers give a coating the required durability. Evonik custom tailors crosslinker chemistry for various technologies, for example for crosslinking by heating or irradiation. This results in color-fast, weathering-resistant coatings—for trains and cars, for example—through the use of such product lines as VESTAGON^® and VESTANAT^®. In addition to this, Evonik has developed new methacrylates for the use of aqueous crosslinking systems, at ambient temperatures. These make a significant contribution to complying with the increasingly stringent VOC directives.

Evonik is a global leader in inorganic particle design. In the area of the ACEMATT^® matting agent, custom designed particles are being developed that change the coating on its surface, giving rise to a new structure. This creates a matting effect by diffuse scattering of light, particularly on metallic surfaces, as in cars, but also for wood and plastic coatings.

Globally integrated structure

Evonik guides and supports its customers throughout the world. Its globally integrated structure provides an ideal base for production of valuable intermediates for the plastics, cosmetics, and electrical engineering industries and of raw materials for coloring and coating systems. Methacrylates, for example, are produced in Shanghai and Fortier (USA) as well as Worms and Wesseling (Germany), isophorones in Herne (Germany) and Mobile (USA), and silicones in Essen (Germany) and Hopewell (USA).

Strong partnership

But good products in themselves are not enough, and system solution providers offering technical consulting services based on years of expertise are thin on the ground. To meet increasingly stringent requirements for powerful but environmentally compatible products—as in the development of solvent-free or water-based coatings—in a global environment, customers need strong partners. Evonik has long realized the importance of bringing together all the partners in the value chain and developing innovative ideas. Academic institutions are also closely integrated into this knowledge network, in the form of more than a hundred collaborative projects. Along with close cross-unit collaboration within the company itself, this ensures a broad palette of coating raw materials that undergoes continuous development.

Please visit our website www.smart-formulating.com as well.