Nicole, what do you do – and why you do it?
It’s my job to make customers happy. And I love it. I listen closely to understand their specific needs and then develop coating solutions that meet or go beyond their expectations – while keeping environmental sustainability in mind. I screen possible raw materials, create and fine-tune a formula, then test it in our laboratories to make sure it’s stable, safe and perfectly optimized for the customer’s unique application process.
My motivation is to minimize the use of our planet’s resources, so I’m deeply proud of how our sustainable innovations cut waste and save energy and water. I also like to experience true customer satisfaction when they use our products. Overall, I enjoy using my creativity every day and seeing the positive impact that our solutions make around the globe.
Tell us about your latest innovation for the BONDERITE Chair.
People said it was impossible to offer BONDERITE M-PP in different colors. For a natural innovator like me, that’s an irresistible challenge. I selected raw materials that are compatible with the autophoretic application process, while also making the corrosion protection even better. Together with our suppliers, we found suitable pigment preparations to give the chair its gorgeous red tone.
I grabbed a couple of my fantastic colleagues to help with the scale-up, and we finally coated the chair.
Together, we took a hands-on approach that created a truly game-changing product. I get really excited about bringing more color into the world – and so do our customers. In these times, when awareness about topics like climate change is so high, they want treatments that combine great corrosion protection for their designs with minimal use of resources.
How does the new process work?
Easy! The metal parts are cleaned and rinsed. Then they’re dipped into our coating bath, which liberates ions from the metal. These ions then cause the coating to deposit on the surface of the metal. After this, the parts go into an oven to cure. Finished!
As you can see, we offer a very simple and efficient paint process without metal pretreatment. Low baking capability reduces energy consumption, and the use of color pigments allows our customers to reduce topcoat thickness or even skip this completely. That makes the whole process quicker, cheaper and more efficient – and contributes to sustainability by saving resources.
How do you feel about the final outcome?
I feel quite satisfied! I was determined to prove that it was possible to add color to BONDERITE M-PP. But we didn’t just make the red color that we’re demonstrating on our BONDERITE Chair…
We also designed other shades. Of course, some colors didn’t work at the first attempt, but we kept experimenting to find solutions for every challenge we encountered. That’s how we created a range of primer colors – including red, orange, blue, green and yellow.
These coatings aren’t just nice to look at. They also form a very even layer and provide outstanding corrosion protection. Our BONDERITE Chair, for example, demonstrated corrosion resistance of up to 1,000 hours in salt spray testing.
What feedback have you received from the market?
This technology is grabbing a lot of attention around the world, and the feedback from customers has been really positive. The sustainability aspect and the simplicity of the process attract particular interest – especially in emerging markets. So we’re really hopeful that our new products will keep growing.
What are you going to do next?
Save the environment with sustainable and simple processes! That’s my passion – and it fuels my excitement for the future of this technology. There are so many potential customers around the globe that need to make their products more sustainable, and we’re going to make it happen for them. Demand for sustainable products will keep growing, and we’re confident that our BONDERITE M-PP product line has the potential to create huge value for customers. The possibilities are endless and I’m very excited about what the future holds.
I’ve seen how we turn great ideas into real products that excite the market. And I’ve also seen how curiosity and creative freedom make it possible to identify unexpected opportunities. I’m now using what I learned from our BONDERITE Chair project to shape new research into additional possibilities like other substrates. I know that my daily work makes an active contribution to making the world more sustainable and more colorful. Those things matter to me. And they matter to our customers too!
