world-class structures from sports stadiums to museums, apartment buildings,
hotels and offices. The Shard combines office space, luxurious apartments, restaurants and the Shangri-LA hotel.
The R-M Refinish Competence
Center in Clermont to undergo
redesign
R-M, a premium brand in the automotive
refinish industry, is restructuring the Refinish Competence Center in Clermont,
France. The European training center in
Clermont is known as the home of R-M.
The premium paint brand’s international
color laboratory is also situated within the
adjacent manufacturing facility. During
the renovation program, R-M is closing
the training center from June 2012 until
April 2013 in order to redesign it in line
with the latest technologies and training
concepts.
“In 2013, R-M will have one of the
most modern training centers for auto-
motive refinishing in Europe,” said Ronny
Raeymakers, manager of the training cen-
ter. “This fundamental restructuring will
provide the perfect conditions for imple-
menting training sessions here for our cus-
tomers, including industry specialists,
from painters to bodyshop owners.”
At the same time, the design and plan-
ning being undertaken by the architects
and engineers will be supported by the in-
house experts and partner companies in
order to tailor the R-M Refinish Compe-
tence Center to the specific requirements
befitting one of Europe’s most modern
training facilities. “As a premium brand, R-
M expects nothing but the best in order to
be able to train and educate our clients and
their employees here to the highest level
and with the best technical equipment,”
said Thomas Gmür, R-M’s brand manager.
“Light and open spaces provide a great
amount of space for the reception area and
for training individual groups. This is how
R-M’s clients can effectively become fa-
miliarized with the newest technologies
and developments in the automotive refin-
ishing business.”
The restructuring works are taking
place between June 2012 and the begin-
ning of April 2013. During this time, the
planned seminars will be transferred and
carried out in peripheral R-M training
centres in Europe.
The Refinish Competence Center was
set up in 1990 in Clermont, approximately
80 km from Paris. After the reopening, the
first highlight will be staging the international R-M Best Painter Contest between
8th and 10th October 8-10 2013, where
young painters from more than 15 countries will demonstrate their abilities.
Coatings for Industry inks deal
with Wooster Brush Company
Coatings for Industry (CFI), a direct-to-contractor supplier of industrial coating
products, has entered an agreement with
The Wooster Brush Company to offer the
161-year-old paint equipment supplier’s
products to its own network of contractors.
Effective June 1, CFI’s customers have
access to both high performance coatings
and many of the tools needed to apply
them from one source, according to CFI
president Kevin Klotz.
“The Wooster Brush product offering
brings Coatings for Industry one big step
closer to being a one-stop shop for con-
tractors seeking the quality materials and
tools they need,” said Klotz. “We’re ex-
cited to be in partnership with such an in-
novative, historic company.”
CFI customers will have access to
Wooster Brush’s complete product line,
but Klotz expects Wooster’s roller cov-
ers in various sizes, extension poles, and
surface prep tools such as scrapers and
wire brushes to be the most popular
items. The equipment will be delivered
alongside CFI’s own primers, sealers and
topcoats.
“For generations, Wooster has been the
go-to source of equipment for painting
and application professionals. This
arrangement represents yet another great
way to get our products directly into their
hands,” said Keith Cornelius, market analyst for Wooster Brush.
AeonClad Coatings opens new
state-of-the-art R&D facility to
design and prototype first of
its kind novel reactors
AeonClad Coatings, LLC, an advanced
materials company focusing on improv-
ing the performance of existing
products for new applications,
has announced the company’s
expansion into a new research
and development facility located in
Austin, Texas. With the new facility,
AeonClad will demonstrate how semiconductor plasma processing techniques
and equipment can be adapted to handle
a wider range of materials, shapes, and
sizes such as powdered plastic additives,
consumer apparel, and novel drug formulations. Instrumental to AeonClad’s
expansion has been the support of a
multi-million dollar investment from one
of its major industry partners.
Giving AeonClad more than 12,000
sq. ft. of additional R&D space, the new
facility will be used for proof-of-concept
design studies for novel reactors, reliabil-ity and efficiency evaluations, and material performance testing. By adapting
semiconductor plasma processing technologies, the novel reactors will have the
capability to run high volume, low cost
materials thereby bringing precision, low
environmental impact (greener), and advanced features that heretofore were not
possible with older technologies. The designing and prototyping of novel reactors
will support AeonClad’s current and future customer development efforts in consumer and industrial materials.
“Our expansion with the north Austin
facility provides the bridge between the
research and development efforts at
AeonClad’s laboratories in Austin’s Bee
Caves, and the full scale production ca-
pacity at our New Mexico site,” said
Tony Taylor, AeonClad Coatings presi-
dent. “It further strengthens our ability to
deliver innovative, market-driven solu-
tions to our customers.”
AeonClad Coatings provides nanocoat-
ing solutions to a wide range of industries
but is focusing its efforts in its north
Austin facility on consumer and industrial
materials. The nanocoatings market is pro-
jected to reach $17.9 billion by 2015. Ro-
bust potential markets for nanocoatings
products exist worldwide for a myriad of
applications spanning pharmaceuticals,
healthcare, electronics, apparel, energy,
transportation, construction, packaging,
textile and security sectors. CW
