Technology, Testing & Performance Seminars

As the European coatings industry moves toward a more sustainable, design-driven, and experience-oriented future, innovation must extend beyond just performance. Solutions must also connect with the evolving visual and tactile expectations of consumer interests.

In this presentation Lorama Group will highlight how our sustainable solutions, colourants, and additive technologies support manufacturers in anticipating Colour, Material & Finish (CMF) trends for 2026–2027. Through a lens of market insight and design forecasting, we’ll explore key directional shifts in colour and surface aesthetics and pair complimentary solutions to demonstrate how companies can align with these consumer demands.

Attendees will gain perspective on how marketing foresight and materials innovation can intersect, helping formulators and brand owners develop coatings that not only perform but inspire.

Consistent colour delivery in coatings plays a critical role in customer satisfaction, perceived quality, production efficiency, and overall brand strength. Robust colour management practices enable paint and coatings manufacturers to achieve reliable colour consistency across all touchpoints, improving efficiency, fostering customer confidence and cohesion in brand representation. This presentation examines approaches to standardizing colour throughout the entire value chain—from manufacturing and quality control to digital channels such as e-commerce—and highlights practical methods for facilitating effective, end-to-end colour management.

Paint production often relies on corrections at the end of the manufacturing process, when the complexity of the product is high, making them very tedious and costly. ORONTEC is focused on early process control and offers a portfolio of modern measurement devices aimed at preventing error propagation along the production process to increase productivity. We want you to rethink your production processes! The presentation will demonstrate this philosophy with three examples:

• Q-Chain® LCM, a liquid color measurement device to monitor the milling process of pigment pastes; milling times can be reduced by up to 25%, while simultaneously eliminating the need for tinting steps later in the process
• MagnoMeter XRS®, a device that is sensitive to interactions at liquid-solid interfaces (e.g. pigment-additive). We will demonstrate its use in the quality control of coatings, e.g. stability / compatibility of pigment pastes or the consistency of incoming raw materials as well as of batch-to-batch production
• Delcor, a new, non-destructive method to evaluate corrosion test panels. Benefits: higher reproducibility/accuracy; the re-usability of test panels leads to savings in test chamber space, material, energy and waste

Weathering & light exposure are significant causes of damage to coatings, plastics, adhesives, sealants, and other organic materials. This damage includes gloss loss, fading, yellowing, cracking, peeling, embrittlement, loss of tensile strength, and delamination. For many manufacturers, it is crucial to formulate products that can withstand outdoor service environments. Accelerated weathering and light stability testers are widely used to provide information on material durability for research and development, quality control and material certification. Outdoor testing in benchmark locations such as Florida and Arizona is an important addition to accelerated testing as it provides realistic results by exposing test specimens to natural conditions. Testing outdoors provides comprehensive, accurate results by reproducing complex weathering patterns not easily duplicated in an accelerated laboratory environment.

UV radiation damages polymeric coating systems and substrates. UV Absorber additives are often included in coating formulations for protection. Traditional organic UV absorbers are consumed by exposure to solar radiation, limiting the lifetime of the coating (and some classes are coming under regulatory pressure). In contrast, inorganic UV absorbers are not consumed in situ, so extending the coating lifetime. Some inorganic types are photoactive, creating radicals which can degrade the coating and substrate.

Energenics manufactures the CerPlus® A series range of inorganic UV absorbers. The active ingredient is cerium oxide nanoparticles, a non-photoactive, non-hazardous material. Water and solvent based dispersions, both with uniform small particle size, allow transparency in coating films.