Axalta Coating Systems shared its industry-leading insights and sustainable offerings for the automotive market at SURCAR Shanghai 2016.

SURCAR has been dedicated to car body finishing for over 50 years and, as the world’s leading automotive body finishing congress, it now attracts the most important industry auto body finishing experts and decision-makers. This year’s event features four separate themed workshops designed to allow visitors to share innovations, experiences and insights.

During the first workshop on Waterborne Technologies, Dr. Fucheng Yan, Product and Technology Director of Axalta China, participated in a panel discussion as one of the industry experts. He shared Axalta’s views on global automotive coating trends and Axalta’s sustainable water-based products and solutions.

“In addition to rich and vivid color, sustainability has become a very important factor for consumers, car makers, as well as others who follow the automotive industry,” said Luke Lu, Vice President of Axalta and President of Axalta’s operations in China. “During its one hundred and fifty year history, Axalta has been dedicated to the development of vehicle coatings, from carriages to the latest model cars. I am pleased that Axalta has been working closely with our global and domestic transportation customers to drive industrial innovation and contribute to a colorful and environmentally responsible industry.”

Axalta has established a solid, leading position in waterborne coatings and process solutions. Axalta’s Harmonized Coating TechnologiesTM, including the 3-Wet System, Eco-Concept and 2-Wet Monocoat system, are designed to deliver excellent performance due to their inherent process efficiencies, superior quality and energy saving sustainability features.

The newest version of Axalta’s 3-Wet Waterborne System is ideal for light vehicle manufacturers. It uses a specially formulated water-based coating that enables successive coats to be applied on top of the prior coat while still wet or that requires only a minimal “flash-dry” step between coats. The whole system can save on energy-related operating costs. It also can reduce capital expenditure associated with the installation of baking ovens which can be replaced with a smaller, lower-energy flash zones or even use ambient temperature.

Axalta’s advanced Eco-Concept process combines the primer and basecoat, followed by the application of a clearcoat. The two-step process is a true primerless coating system which reduces a layer and baking stage. It increases efficiency and shortens the production process compared to the traditional painting process.

The 2-Wet Monocoat system is another great choice for light vehicle OEMs. With six American patents, the 2-Wet Monocoat system integrates the paint performance of a clearcoat-over-basecoat system with the productivity of a monocoat process. Starting with a layer of 2-Wet primer, followed by a no-heat, ambient flash, the vehicle is then coated with the Monocoat coating followed by a standard bake process. The system reduces top coating applications from three to two and the number of drying steps from two to one. This is designed to increase productivity while also reducing energy consumption and shorten the paint shop footprint. Using a hyper-branched acrylic polymer, the system offers a high quality appearance and durability. This process had been adopted by a number of the world’s leading automotive manufacturers in the past two years.

Axalta has been doing business in China since 1984. This wealth of institutional knowledge has helped Axalta maintain its leadership role for developing cutting edge coating products. In addition to its Jiading waterborne coatings facility in Shanghai, Axalta operates an adjacent plant in Jiading and a plant in Changchun, six Axalta-Huajia Powder Coating operations, four refinish learning and development centers and, in Shanghai, a Global Color Lab and Asia Pacific Innovation Center to support R&D and its Asia Pacific regional headquarters. Axalta’s multiple resources in China work together to support the sustained, long-term growth of China’s automotive, commercial transportation and industrial sectors that use Axalta coatings.