Coatings World - September 2013

McFadden, president, Service King. “We also look forward to being represented bi-annually on the national stage through Axalta’s partnership with NASCAR and four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, Jeff Gordon.”

Sansin Corporation Donates
a Portion of its Eco2 Wood
Stain to Two Canadian
Organizations

The Sansin Corporation recently announced that it will donate a portion of its Sansin Eco2 wood stain to two Canadian organizations. Additionally, the company announced that it is extending its donated stain program. Qualifying community organizations and groups across Canada and the U.S. are encouraged to apply.

The beneficiaries of Sansin’s latest stain donation are Scouts Canada and Progress Through Partnership. Scouts Canada is the nation’s premier youth-serving organization. The group used the stain to refinish six Adirondack sleeping shelters this summer. Progress through Partnership is a group formed to enhance the quality of life in Strathroy, where Sansin is headquartered. The organization will use its free Eco2 to stain a railway platform/ticket booth at Alexander Park in Strathroy.

Sansin Eco2 is a zero-waste solid color exterior and clear interior wood stain that was introduced in 2012. It is offered as a limited edition stain and is available in lava, adobe and charcoal colors for the exterior and clears for the interior.

The company is accepting applications from groups or communities that could benefit from Sansin’s help to beautify and rejuvenate a building or structure important to furthering the group’s mission.

Projects will be considered on a first come, first served basis. For more information go to the company’s website at www. sansin.com.

Axalta Expands Coatings
Technology Center

Axalta Coating Systems, a leading
global supplier of liquid and powder
coatings, has invested $5 million in a
new pilot reactor that has begun op-
erations to support coatings polymer
research and scale-up activities at its
Coatings Technology Center (CTC) in
Wilmington, DE. The reactor system
is coupled with a complete process au-
tomation and control system to enable
precise control of ingredient amounts
and critical process conditions such as
temperature and pressure. The expan-
sion will enhance product development
capabilities and accelerate the manu-
facture and introduction of the next
generation of polymers that offer im-
proved performance properties to meet
customer expectations. The polymers
produced from the pilot reactor can be
used for both traditional solvent-based
and more environmental friendly water-
based coating products.

“Coatings are about appearance and per-
formance,” said Axalta Chairman and CEO
Charles Shaver. “Our goal is to provide our
customers with the best possible coatings,
ones that will cure faster, adhere better, offer
the latest colors and be more durable than
any others on the market.”
The new pilot reactor is a key compo-
nent in the advancement of a variety of
polymer technologies to support innova-
tive coating development. Formulations
that work in a laboratory environment
may not necessarily transfer consistently
to full scale production. The pilot reactor,
also known as a semi-works facility, is a
small scale manufacturing system that al-
lows new polymer formulations to be pro-
duced in a way that fully mimics full scale
production. Improved first pass produc-
tion capability means increased product
speed to market for our customers.

“Our reactor in Wilmington will enable us to manufacture and test new polymer concepts quickly with lower cycle times and bring them to market faster than before,” said Panos Kordomenos, senior vice president for research and development at Axalta.

The CTC is Axalta’s global center
for research and development, includ-
ing the work performed by its special-
ized polymer technology team. The new
facility will complement existing Axalta
polymer research capabilities in Europe,
Asia Pacific and Latin America, provid-
ing state-of-the-art polymer production
scale-up resources that will enable the de-
velopment of future polymer technologies
for customers around the world.

Asian Paints Completes Acquisition of Sleek Group Asian Paints has acquired a 51 percent stake in Sleek Group, a kitchen solutions provider. Asian Paints believes the acquisition has a strategic fit both with current business as well as other lines of home improvement businesses that may be added in the future. It said that the modern kitchen space, which is currently undergoing growth, has very few organized pan India players and is growing rapidly.

“The engagement with the Sleek management over the last few months has reaffirmed our faith in the business and the opportunity of growth and synergy that it offers us,” said K.B.S. Anand, managing director and CEO, Asian Paints Ltd.

U.S. ARL Approves Hentzen
Coatings’ CARC Powder
Top Coat

Hentzen Coatings, Inc. has announced that the U.S. Army Research laboratory (ARL, Aberdeen, MD) has issued its first ever approval of a CARC powder top coat per MIL-PRF-32348 Type III to Hentzen, as of April 17, 2013. Hentzen completed this multi-year product development project independently, continuing its long tradition as an innovative leader in the development and production of both liquid and powder military coatings.

For more than thirty years, Hentzen has been the leading provider of military coatings, leading the world in liquid and powder CARC coating developments. Starting with lead and chromate free primers (MIL-P-53022) and topcoats (MIL-C-46168) in the early 1980s, and continuing with at least seven major CARC first approvals in the years since, Hentzen has consistently demonstrated its leadership in CARC technology development. Hentzen currently supplies almost two-thirds of these military specification products globally.