The use of plastics is increasing in our daily lives. In the automotive market, one third of auto components are already made of plastics as OEMs target to reduce a vehicle’s average weight by 10-15% in the coming years to enhance fuel efficiency and reduce their environmental footprint. For the beauty and skin care market, over 70% of cosmetics bottles and caps have adopted plastics (virgin, bio-based or recycle types) as the key substrates. The electronics and telecommunications markets have used plastics for decades as dominant substrates due to their ease of processing. As a result, there is a continuously growing demand for high-performance, high-efficiency and value-adding coatings for various plastic substrates. However, due to their low surface energies as well as their sensitivity to temperature and solvents, many plastics are difficult to coat, rendering the development of coating systems for such substrates challenging for formulators and raw material suppliers.
In that respect, energy-curable coating technology has already proven to overcome the limitations of conventional coatings by providing a higher overall performance of the cured coating including scratch, abrasion and stain resistance.