Coatings World - November 2011

$318.9 million from $292.5
million in the fiscal 2011 first
quarter. Consumer segment
EBIT improved five percent to
“Our consumer segment continued to
be impacted by stubbornly high raw ma-
terial costs, resulting in EBIT growth
below the level of sales growth,” Sullivan
said. “We continue to gain market share
in our consumer businesses, which are
also benefiting from the introduction of
new, higher-end products at price points
that are significantly higher than our tra-
ditional consumer lines. Our consumer
primer/sealers line also performed well in
the quarter.”
The company’s industrial segment
sales improved 10. 7 percent, to $667.0
million from $602.3 million a year ago.
EBIT grew 10. 9 percent to $92.5 million
from $83.3 million in the fiscal 2011
first quarter.

“Improvements in our industrial segment results reflect continued strength in repair and maintenance product lines, along with more modest growth from business units serving new commercial construction markets,” said Sullivan. “Particularly robust growth occurred in our high performance corrosion control coatings and fiberglass reinforced plastic grating businesses. Raw material costs remained challenging for our industrial businesses.”

General Motors’ Chevrolet Sonic.

General Motors uses eco-
friendly water-based
“three-wet” paint process for
Chevrolet Sonic

For the production of its subcompact Chevrolet Sonic, General Motors brought online a new paint shop at its Orion Assembly Center that features a “three-wet” paint process. The process eliminates the need for a primer bake oven, normally used between the primer and color-coating layers. The Orion Assembly Center allows three layers of paint to be applied one after another while still wet before a single trip though the oven.

This process reduces the paint shop

footprint by 10 percent, said GM. It also provides additional floor space and reduces the energy needed to heat and cool these areas.

“Cutting our greenhouse gas emis-
sions and reducing our energy consump-
tion were key to implementing our
water-based three-wet paint process,”
said Mauricio Pincheira, paint manager
at Orion. “We want to provide a durable
paint that impresses our first-time Sonic
customers and maintain the tough envi-
ronmental standards we have across the
company.”
Orion’s new paint shop was engineered
to minimize energy use while reducing sol-
vent emissions. By using the three-wet
process, a thin film pretreatment and lean
design methods, Orion’s paint shop uses
50 percent less process energy per vehicle
than the shop it replaced, the car maker
said. It is also heated by natural and land-
fill gas, which results in less emissions
than coal-fired boilers.

When full shift production is achieved, Orion’s new paint shop will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 80,000 metric tons per year—equivalent to the annual emissions from 14,000 vehicles—and solvent emissions by approximately 108,000 pounds of solvent per year.

These cost-saving paint process im-
provements trimmed the manufacturing
costs by approximately $40 per vehicle.

Dunmore Corp to upgrade its
manufacturing facility for
coating products in Germany

Dunmore Corporation’s sister company Dunmore Europe GmbH has invested $17 million (€ 12 million) to upgrade its headquarters and manufacturing facility in Freiburg, Germany to meet increasing demand for its coated and laminated products in the solar, automotive, insulation and aerospace industries. The modified Freiburg facility will encompass a new coating line for coated and laminated products with widths of more than two meters. The new coating line joins two existing lines making films for applications such as solar photovoltaic backsheets, insulation films and high-performance labels. The new production line can also run at a wide range of speeds, from 30 meters per minute to 400 meters per minute, which expands the range of coatings and products Dunmore can produce for the European and Asian markets, the company said. The new line also features updated process controls, video inspection systems and advanced instrumentation that makes quality control easier.