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Coil Coating

The Evolution of the Coated Coil

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MCN Editor Karen Zajac-Frazee Service centers remain crucial cog in the supply chain for painted metals.

Manufacturers have been applying paints and other coatings to coils for almost 100 years, though the industry continues to evolve and grow.   

To begin with, there have been many changes to the coil coating supply chain in recent years.  Kevin Buchanan, president and CEO, GFG Peabody, Milwaukee, says COVID-19 was a shock and hurt everybody. Things seemed to have returned back to more or less normal. “For the coil coating supply chain itself, there’s quite a bit of capacity coming online here in the U.S. and more and more products are converting from post-painted to pre-painted, driving that demand for painted coils up and that’s the trend that is going to continue as it hasn’t reached its peak yet.”

Similarly, Pauline Maillot, Americas technical director, Beckers, Elk Grove Village, Ill., agrees that while COVID was the first, there have been multiple other events that have affected the supply chain. “We have implemented significant adjustments in our internal policies to enhance resilience and sustainability. We’ve focused on complexity reduction by working on eliminating unique raw materials and strengthening the partnerships with local key suppliers. We have also increased safety stock levels to ensure consistent supply and mitigate risks of material shortage while providing excellent service to our customers.”

In addition, over the years there has been consolidation in the U.S. market, both on the coatings side and in the coil coating footprint itself. “While there’s been consolidation, there has also been investment to increase market capacity with folks like SDI, Nucor and Precoat building new lines. Additionally, there’s been consolidation in the coil coating side of it with folks like BlueScope acquiring Metal Coaters. VORTEQ has made six acquisitions in the last eight years, so we’ve been on a growth effort through M&A, buying different independent coil coating businesses and tucking them into the VORTEQ brand,” says Jim Dockey, CEO, VORTEQ Coil Finishers, Oakmont, Pa.

Next, there are common challenges in maintaining high-quality standards during the coil coating process. Amanda Paterline, marketing manager, Americas, AkzoNobel Coil and Extrusion Coatings, Columbus, Ohio, says the importance of a comprehensive approach ensures optimal performance of its coil coatings in tough environments. Customers should look for warranties on its primers and topcoats, demonstrating their resilience against corrosion. “Equally important is selecting quality substrate and following proper preparation and installation processes when it comes to protecting against corrosion. This represents the need for customers to maintain meticulous standards at each stage of the process to protect against environmental factors such as coastal corrosion.”

Paterline adds that the company’s coatings perform best when all systems are optimized for corrosion performance and urges customers to liaise closely with all parties involved in the process to maximize results.

Furthermore, Connor McMenamin, president, Chemcoaters, Gary, Ind., says a lot of the challenges come from all the different variables involved. “You have to get into your customer spec almost immediately and everybody needs something very different, so we’re talking grams-per-meter squared of coating. It’s a very exacting industry and if you don’t do it well, you’re just not going to be in business.” 

“The most important thing is to be consistent in the production because what customers will ask is if they can get repeatable results even after a certain time span. If you have an automated process, obviously the variability is reduced, the impact of the human factor is not so important. In fact, we have developed an automation package for Roll Coaters which ensures highly repeatable results in paint application. We have automatic thickness control so we can take the measurement of the actual paint thickness, feed the reading back into the control system and act on the machine to apply and keep the paint application constant,” says Diego Pedemonte, sales director, GLOBUS, Torino, Italy.

Another key point, says Pedemonte, is the consistency of operation in the oven because the operation there is going to affect the product. So again, automation here is playing an important role because production recipes can guarantee repeatable process conditions and a process data collection package will allow the customers to analyze the process parameter for any coil and investigate the origin of possible deviations in the parameters.

Dockey says a variety of techniques are used on every line to meet quality requirements based on the products in play. There’s a wide range of quality expectations between one market and another. “We paint a lot of surface-critical material at our coating line in Tennessee and there are a lot of things we do to keep that line clean in order to be able to meet those requirements.  A lot of it has to do with developing the right procedures, having the right experience of your line operators and your quality control team and then running the right product mix across that line to maximize the ability to meet the requirements of the end-use.”

Also, Steve Rutkowski, senior manager, coil, PPG, Pittsburgh, Pa., says the company is committed to maintaining high safety and quality standards. The common challenges in the overall coil coating process include consistent application over varying substrates, managing environmental factors, as well as the performance standard requirements on various applications. Its teams work with customers to address those challenges to ensure high quality results at every stage. 

Moreover, there are several factors that influence the cost of coil coating, though Maillot says the paint itself will often have limited impact on the cost of the final end product. The price of a pigment that is meant for exterior products versus the pigment that is used inside is different. You also have effect pigments (metallic, mica, etc.) and those are obviously more expensive. Then if you look at the overall end product, the thickness that the customer is going to apply impacts the cost and then the substrate they use, steel or aluminum, the purity of it, the grade of it, the thickness of it, all of this would have an impact on the final cost. 

Likewise, Pedemonte agrees paint and energy are the major factors. Labor cost, on the other hand, affects low-capacity lines more than high-capacity lines. Since the size of the crew is not proportional to the productivity, this cost factor will be less significant for lines where you are spreading the labor cost over a bigger production run.

Besides, Rutkowski states raw materials are by far the largest expense when it comes to coil coatings. After that, it would be labor, the batch and the run size that are going to influence the cost from a production standpoint. Naturally, tariffs could have an impact in 2025 on the cost of coil coating operations. “Clearly having efficient production processes and new technologies around UV/EB could play a role in managing those costs while maintaining high-quality results,” he says. 

There are several common end uses for coil coated products. VORTEQ’s business is heavily concentrated in the aluminum side of the market as opposed to steel.  “We paint both but aluminum is by far our larger focus. The building and construction markets are greater than 60 percent of the square footage or tonnage out there that’s painted through the coil coating process, so that’s a large part of our mix. Also, metal roofing is a very large growth area for the coil coating markets. There are associations out there like Metal Roofing Alliance and Metal Construction Association that focus their entire effort on growing the metal roofing industry, which benefits the metal producers and the coil coaters like ourselves.”

Furthermore, Dockey adds the building  and construction markets are performing fairly well. “There’s a general shortage of housing and there’s always a strong market for repair and remodel on an existing house from a storm or just an upgrade to your gutter system. We follow housing starts very closely and they are going to use a lot of painted metal whether it’s the siding, the windows, the gutters, the downspouts, the flashing, the soffits and the fascia. Hopefully even in some cases, the metal roof itself,” he says.

Paterline says the most common end-uses for coil coated products are in building materials; specifically roofing and sidewall – including board and batten, lap siding applications and garage doors. Coated products are also used for domestic appliances such as white goods and UL-certified coatings for HVAC systems.

“The overall building and construction market is showing slow economic and commercial/industrial growth, with moderately flat demand for 2025. High interest rates and inflation are the main drivers, putting pressure on new projects and new builds. Material availability, particularly steel, continues to cause tightness in the supply chain. 

Macroeconomic indicators suggest that housing and construction will remain relatively flat through 2025, assuming interest rates remain stable. Additionally, governmental drivers and proposed tariffs may impact material availability and supply, pushing the U.S. supply chain to increase capacity to support current demand,” she adds.

Throughout this, service centers will continue to play a critical role in delivering coated materials to OEMs and consumers, a key link in the chain ensuring timely and efficient distribution of PPG’s products, Rutkowski says. “The coaters inherently want to paint larger coils for efficiencies and cost purposes; therefore, service centers are critical to the industry. For example, to cut and slit to length in order to get OEMs and consumers exactly what they require, PPG’s products flow through smoothly many of these service centers in the industry that have and continue to get to the proper end-use.”

Dockey says his company has several tight relationships with the service centers across the country. Working more in the aluminum space, the company has relied on nonferrous distributors as an entryway to the market. “Service centers will have a focused sales team on the ground, typically regionally, which serves as an extension to us. We work closely with them on specifications, on product requirements, on inventory programs and delivery performance.”

“We rely on the service centers as another channel to the marketplace for us where they can develop the relationships with the OEMs. They can add value through coil processing, cutting to length and slitting so they can add additional downstream value from us. They add a closeness to their customers so certainly we rely on them as an important component of our customer base,” he adds.

There are several technical innovations in the coil coating process taking hold, including UV/EB, Maillot says. “It’s more than just an improvement – it’s really a game changer and a breakthrough in the industry. It’s going to change a lot of things. The main difference with what we have today in the paint is that the UV/EB is 100 percent solid solvent-free. The process is also very different so the lines, the footprint that you need to apply the same paint would be drastically smaller. Overall, it’s much more sustainable.”

Last year AkzoNobel announced a partnership with Wuxi EL PONT Radiation Technology Co., Ltd., a national high-tech enterprise that specializes in radiation technology applications. The cooperation will focus on the development and promotion of E-Beam technology, a process that uses electron beams to cure coatings on metal substrates. “E-Beam technology offers significant advantages over conventional thermal curing methods, such as lower energy consumption, faster production speed, higher quality and reduced environmental impact,” Paterline states.

Pedemonte says digital printing is still a new technology which gives operators the ability to print images on metal coils. The ability of applying any image and pattern on the metal substrate with almost photographic quality opens end-markets which are maybe out of reach for standard coil coating. Then there is definitely an interest in adopting solvent-free coatings. Coatings that are typically used are solvent-based; the solvent percentage varies between 45 and 55 percent depending on the application. 

“There are new technologies that are solvent-free; these paints are not cured with a thermal process as it happens in standard coatings but they are typically cured with electron beam or UV dryers. It’s a different type of chemistry, a different type of process. With this technology, the CO2 emission of the process is cut basically to zero. It’s not fully developed yet but I’m pretty sure that in the near future it will become more and more important. If you can switch to a solvent-free coil coating process, obviously there would be a dramatic reduction in CO2 emissions associated with this industry,” he adds.

What’s on the horizon? Buchanan says sensors are going to make a big impact. 

As sensors provide more and more information, lines will be able to target the coating more directly as opposed to from an operator. “We also have, at the same time, the coil heads that can be moved very precisely using servo mechanical actuators which we’ve been doing for a while, but the next big leap is coming over the next few years where this thickness data feeds directly into an automation system which controls the coating head and makes those thousands of an inch adjustments automatically based on feedback,” he says.

Dockey believes advancements will continue to be made on energy efficiency, with gains to be made on the curing side of the process. “We use a lot of electricity and burn natural gas to dry our paint. I think over time that will be a continued area to focus on and that can be done through innovations in the ovens and the oxidizers or it can be done through the technology of the coatings and the formulations of the coating systems. It’s really a two-road path to drive those innovations both on the coatings and the coating process itself.”

“I would say definitely there will be a strong push for the reduction of CO2.  This will be the main focus. This brings back the so-called energy curable coatings that can be cured with Electron Beam Dryers or with UV lamps. Additionally, we hope digital printing will gain more and more presence on the market because obviously this is something that we are pushing,” Pedemonte says.

McMenamin agrees that UV/EB coating tech is going to become more prevalent. Then the other thing is many in the coil coating industry are still using hexavalent chromium. “It’s got a good corrosion-resistance, it’s a self-healing product and it is an additive in many different product formulations that exist. It’s a very common item, it’s very inexpensive but it’s a known carcinogen and environmental law is going to continue to be pushed toward weeding some of these chemicals out.” 

“Europe’s already trying to get rid of it and we’re a little bit behind that. Some customers and applications will not take hexavalent chromium. But when you move to trivalent chrome, which our products are based on, most products are not able to match like-for-like on a performance level or a cost level or some combination. Then in Europe they’re pushing for non-chrome which is a totally different ball game. Today, people want environmentally friendly products but the supply chain is not ready to pay more for it yet in most cases. That’s got to happen, but the question is ‘When?’” he concludes.

[Caption:]
The paint itself is often not a significant source of the cost of a painted coil. (Photo courtesy Beckers)


[Sidebar:]
Asphalt on the Ropes: Hope for Metal Roofing

Major storms and other environmental events are creating questions about the viability of shingle roofs in some areas, a situation that would only benefit the metal roofing industry. 

Asphalt shingles have been the dominant roofing material choice for years, with a lower initial price tag vs. metal driving the decisions for cost-conscious builders. The metals industry has made repeated efforts to try to chip away at asphalt’s market share, with limited success. 

As Florida and other Southeastern states face debilitating hurricanes and the West Coast deals with out-of-control wildfires, how shingle roofs hold up to these catastrophes is being called into question, and the lower upfront cost may not be worth it in the long run. 

Renee Ramey, executive director, Metal Roofing Alliance, Longview, Wash., says as the popularity of asphalt roofing declines, metal roofing is sure to gain more market share. Homeowners looking for longer-lasting, more durable roofing solutions will continue to choose metal as the more attractive alternative, especially given its lifespan (metal roofs can last 40 to 70 years compared to asphalt’s range of 15 to 30 years), durability and proven performance in severe weather.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation recently shared the observation that asphalt roof shingles often do not last as long as manufacturers claim. The office suggested more resilient roofing types, such as metal, that hold up far better in Florida’s weather, with more ability to withstand high winds, impact damage and hurricane conditions.

While no one suggests a ban on asphalt in the Sunshine State is in the offing, the Insurance Institute for Business and Safety joined in questioning the use of shingles on Florida homes. According to the Palm Beach Post, the institute claimed, asphalt shingles are failing American homeowners, and their durability has not advanced.”
 
“Threats are increasing, home insurance premiums are increasing,” says Ramey. “The time for short-term thinking has passed and now it’s all about realizing what the long-term costs really are for using less resilient building materials and methods.”  

And it’s not just in Florida. In January, California was once again the site of devastating wildfires, these doing billions in damage near Los Angeles. According to the Metal Roofing Alliance, proper roofing techniques and the use of ignition-resistant materials such as metal roofs (which often carry a Class 4 rating for wildfire protection – the highest available) are continuing to gain favor with homeowners desperate to try to protect their homes.

“As sustainability becomes more of a priority, consumers will install metal roofing due to its superior energy performance – reducing heating and cooling costs while also providing the perfect platform for solar. Therefore, a waning asphalt roofing market bodes well for metal roofing, as homeowners and contractors seek more durable, energy-efficient and long-lasting alternatives,” Ramey says.

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