PPG Industries recently completed a $5 million expansion at its coatings manufacturing facility in Wuppertal, Germany. The project added equipment to existing buildings on the campus, supporting up to a 35 percent increase in annual production capacity of environmentally sustainable waterborne coatings for automotive and industrial applications. The facility, which employs more than 190 people, plans to hire employees to manage the increased capacity.
The additional capacity will enable PPG to meet increasing demand for its waterborne coatings by automotive manufacturers and industrial customers in the region. Waterborne coatings use water as a base instead of the chemical solvents used in traditional coatings. In addition to a heightened focus throughout Europe on using sustainable products and practices, waterborne-coatings demand is being driven by adoption of compact-paint-process technologies by automotive manufacturers in Europe. Compact paint processes reduce the number of st EPS needed to paint a vehicle, enabling manufacturers to reduce energy used during the process and downsize the space required for the paint process in a manufacturing facility.
“Waterborne coatings offer manufacturers a more sustainable alternative to typical solvent-based coatings by reducing volatile organic compounds,” said Jean-Marie Greindl, vice president, automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) coatings, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and president, PPG EMEA. “PPG has been at the forefront of this technology throughout its evolution and holds a leading position in this segment in Europe.”
