European Coatings Conference
"High Performance Waterborne Clearcoats"
October 18th - 19th 2007 / Berlin, Germany

In the development of VOC-free or VOC-reduced coatings systems, waterborne coating systems certainly are the major technology, at least in Europe. In many applications, they have come to be the standard systems of choice and have since long replaced their solventborne counterparts. In some important clearcoat or topcoat applications, however, solventborne systems defend their position successfully, and waterborne systems are still of minor importance – for instance in the automotive OEM and refinish markets.

But waterborne coatings technology is developing fast and great research efforts have been made to bring their performance to a level, where high performance clearcoat applications become viable.

The new European Coatings Conference “High Performance Waterborne Clearcoats” sets out to monitor these efforts, to present the latest developments and concepts of raw materials and formulations for such systems, and to discuss what is possible today with waterborne clearcoats – and what is not. Thus, 15 international experts from industry and academia have been invited to deliver high-level technical presentations in order to update you on their recent research results, and to face your questions about their practical applicability. The presentations address waterborne clearcoat developments for a variety of applications ranging from automotive car body to high performance wood coatings. Also, presentations will address fundamental aspects of the film formation process in such coatings and their implications on the coatings performance – a relation that still is not completely understood.

As always during the ECCs, our interactive focus workshops on current technical issues will round off the event – and, in addition, the Pre-Conference Tutorial “Fundamentals of Film Formation” will give you the opportunity to update your knowledge on the chemistry and physics behind this process, as far as they are relevant to understanding and developing waterborne coatings systems.

The main conference is divided into the following three sessions:

Do not miss this premiere - see you in Berlin!