As a key technology, industrial coating has a decisive influence on a company’s value creation chain – whether in-house painting operations or coating job-shops are involved. Painting and coating requirements which have to be fulfilled for the production of industrial products, as well as consumer goods, are becoming more and more demanding around the world. On the one hand, painting quality has to be further improved and justice needs to be done to steadily growing demand for individualised products which, at the same time, are subject to tremendous cost pressure. On the other hand, stricter environmental regulations have to be complied with and resources need to be used more efficiently. Beyond this, lightweight design with multi-material substrates, as well as new production processes such as additive manufacturing with rough, porous surfaces are resulting in new challenges for painting and coating technologies. And on top of it all, coating service providers and in-house coating departments are dealing with trends like automation and digitalisation as well. Attention will be focused on all of these issues at the upcoming PaintExpo, which will be held at the Karlsruhe Exhibition Centre from 21 through 24 April 2020 with offerings more comprehensive than anywhere else around the globe. Roughly 400 companies, including all of the industry sector’s market and technology leaders, had already made firm bookings for their booth floor space at the end of March. “Strong demand for exhibition floor space at PaintExpo – well in advance of the event – makes it clear that suppliers of industrial coating technologies see the world’s leading trade fair as an indispensable event. And thus it’s already plainly apparent that we’ll present the world’s most up-to-date and comprehensive offerings for industrial coating technology to the visitors, as well as solutions for their individual tasks”, reports Jürgen Haußmann, managing director of event promoters FairFair GmbH.

All Technologies, Materials and Industry Sectors

PaintExpo’s exhibition programme covers all industrial coating technologies throughout the entire process sequence from powder coating, as well as liquid and UV painting, right on up to coil and in-mould coatings. Exhibiting companies will present innovations, technologies, processes and services for designing, running and optimising processes in order to meet the great demands placed upon quality and flexibility, as well as material, energy and cost efficiency, for the painting and coating of components made of metals, plastics, wood, wooden materials, glass, material combinations and more. This begins with parts pre-treatment and includes everything from systems and application technology, conveyor systems and drying, right on up to quality assurance and packaging of the coated products. Where painting systems are concerned, attention will be focused on new and further developed solutions for all types of coating processes including ultra-high-solid systems, chrome replacement coatings, gel coats and systems which provide coated surfaces with special functional and/or decorative properties, improve corrosion protection and contribute to reduced consumption of materials and energy. Responses to challenges resulting from the trend towards individualisation right on down to batch size 1 will be offered by exhibitors with system and optimisation concepts which are consistently laid out for flexibility, quality and efficiency.

Simulation and automation of the coating process are further current issues which will be in focus at the upcoming PaintExpo. In particular in the field of job-shop coating, Industry 4.0 is also gaining relevance, i.e. digital integration of the coating process into production. Solutions by means of which this can be implemented will also be exhibited at the world’s leading trade fair for industrial coating technologies.

“Complete and fully representative state-of-the-art offerings make it possible for job-shop coaters and visitors from companies with in-house painting operations from all industry sectors to quickly find technically and economically ideal solutions for their tasks”, says Jürgen Haußmann with confidence.

Further information, the entire exhibition portfolio and a preliminary exhibitor list are available at www.paintexpo.com.