Steel Dialogue #1 | 29 November 2022
Coil Coating vs. Powder Coating
The first Steel Dialogue focused on Coil Coating vs. Powder Coating, answered several questions and revealed a clear winner. colofer® expert Tom Sylvester, Head of Sales, House Industry, voestalpine Steel Division, and Sigurd Braathen, owner of OSO Hotwater, presented the advantages of precoated steel strip in your applications.
Reduced complexity
Complexity is detrimental to competitiveness. Precoated steel offers a significant advantage because it reduced the number of decisions that have to be made. Once the color, surface, delivery date, coil size and preferred packaging have been selected, the customer receives an all-in-one carefree package from voestalpine. Independent operation of a powder coating line is comparatively more complex in most every case. This results in lost time and additional costs.
30% lower costs
Coil coating offers maximum flexibility in terms of cost in volatile times. By opting for organic-coated steel strip, material costs can be made variable based on supply from a single source. The powder coating scenario is very different. Not only the cost of the steel, but the extra expenses for substrates, storage, coating lines, furnace treatments, laboratories, infrastructure, research and development must all be taken into account.
Better for the environment
colofer® exceeds the requirements of every environmental standard. For products in the greentec steel edition, CO2 emissions amount to even 80% below the global average. The carbon footprint of powder coating is much more difficult to determine because it depends on the equipment. Coil coating is much more environmentally friendly when compared to the coating of individual components.
The high level of voestalpine quality that you have come to expect
Each ton of steel is produced on state-of-the-art equipment using high-quality substrates. The product is continuously quality-controlled for robustness, finish, gloss and smoothness. Coil coating offers a wide variety of surfaces and colors for limitless applications and looks.
Impressive in every application
Sigurd Braathen, owner of OSO Hotwater, Europe's leading manufacturer of stainless steel water heaters, was able to give his company an economic boost by switching from powder to coil coating. Replacement of the in-house powder coating line and investment in a fully integrated, automatic processing line for organic coated steel strip has paid off in many ways. In addition to improvements in quality and material flow, our competitiveness was raised on an international scale with a 150% increase in capacity.
Question from the audience
In retrospect, what would you have done differently when you switched to organic coating?
Sigurd Braathen: We used to carry out all our production processes on our own, including stamping, forming, cutting and powder coating. This meant that we had to maintain a very large storage area and pay a lot of transport and processing costs. The space requirements were enormous. Looking back, we really would have benefitted from making the switch a lot earlier.