Page 31 - Plastics News April 2025

COMPANY NEWS

possibilities for testing formulations. It relieves
our specialized laboratories of their standard
tasks and can analyze samples more systemati-
cally. This allows us to focus our expertise and
experience even more on customer-specific
topics or try approaches we couldn't have im-
plemented otherwise," says Martin Merkens,
Head of Sales & Market Development EMLA in
Covestro's Coatings and Adhesives business en-
tity. “This will particularly help us in the area of
circular economy: Alternative raw materials, for
example bio-based or recycled materials, can be
tested faster and evaluated for their properties
in the final product.”

Facility to Run Tens of Thousands of Tests An-
nually

The new facility can operate 24 hours a day, 7
days a week. The goal is to run tens of thou-
sands of tests annually. This sets a new stand-
ard in terms of number, variety, precision, and
testing speed. Another advantage: The auto-
mated laboratory generates a large amount of
structured data. The knowledge about formu- Covestro also enables easy forwarding of gener-
lation possibilities and influencing factors thus ated samples to more specialized testing labora-
will grow rapidly. The collected data, combined tories. This makes it possible to supplement the
with measurement data from existing studies, is datasets with market-specific test results and
evaluated using special machine learning algo- identify relevant dependencies more quickly.
rithms to further improve formulations. Artificial
intelligence is also used to predict new experi- Covestro at European Coatings Show 2025 in
ments based on property goals and simultane- Nuremberg
ously verify them in the automated laboratory At the European Coatings Show from March 25-
– creating a self-learning system.
27 in Nuremberg, experts from application de-
velopment and segments such as automotive,
In addition to formulating water- and solvent-
based 1K and 2K systems, the automated lab- printing & packaging, or construction & archi-
oratory also performs numerous material tests tecture will be present to discuss new, joint ap-
on the raw materials themselves, their formu- proaches made possible by the laboratory with
lations, and applied films. Application can even customers. Visit the company's booth in Hall 4A,
take place in different climates in the lab to sim- Stand 438.
ulate product use under application conditions. Source – COVESTRO
The progressing laboratory digitalization across

April 2025 PLASTICS NEWS 31