Mickey Fortune, RadTechCoil coating has long been viewed as a potential fit for UV and electron beam curing, yet adoption has remained limited despite well-understood technical advantages. Paint and Coatings Industry Magazine recently spoke with Mickey Fortune, associate executive director of RadTech International North America, to discuss why progress has been slower than expected and what it will take to move UV/EB coil coating forward. RadTech is an international association dedicated to advancing ultraviolet and electron beam technologies through education, collaboration and the development of safe, efficient and sustainable industrial processing practices.

UV/EB has been discussed in coil coating for years. Why hasn’t adoption moved faster?

Everyone agrees that UV/EB makes sense for coil coating. It offers faster cure, lower energy use, smaller footprints, improved surface performance, and sustainability advantages. The challenge has been translating that consensus into widespread adoption.

The question isn’t whether UV/EB works. The question is how an industry builds confidence in a process no single company can validate alone. What’s holding adoption back is not technology, but the challenge of introducing a new production system inside organizations that are optimized for the old one.

When people talk about UV/EB adoption, what do they usually get wrong?

The conversation often centers on chemistry readiness, but this is not a chemistry problem. It is an organizational problem.

Organizations are shaped by resources, processes and priorities. Breakthroughs fail when these don’t align. Large coatings companies have deep technical talent, pilot lines, global service teams and strong customer relationships, but their innovation engines are designed to improve solvent-based and thermal-cure systems that already dominate the market. UV/EB doesn’t fit neatly into those structures.

What makes coil coating a particularly difficult environment for new curing approaches?

Coil coating lines are billion-dollar assets operating on razor-thin margins. They cannot tolerate downtime. That level of optimization makes experimentation extremely difficult.

UV/EB doesn’t just change coatings. It changes the entire production system, including line layout, cure physics, throughput, energy systems, quality control and both capital and operating costs. That mismatch quietly kills projects, even when the technology works.

When UV/EB is evaluated seriously, what tends to change beyond just the curing step?

UV/EB affects the full production system, not just cure. It changes how lines are configured, how energy is supplied, how quality is measured and how cost structures are managed.

Large suppliers depend on high volumes, global SKUs, long lifecycles, stable margins and low-risk approvals. UV/EB projects typically begin as small-volume, custom, line-specific co-development efforts. That disconnect between business models and project realities creates friction across the system.

Why does risk loom so large in UV/EB coil coating discussions?

Steel and coil companies run billion-dollar lines and consume enormous volumes of coating material. They require dependable global supply, warranties and performance guarantees. Small or specialty suppliers are often best positioned to innovate, but they cannot absorb that level of operational risk alone.

When a UV/EB coil trial fails, the real question is who owns the downtime, the scrap and the learning. Without shared risk, experimentation is limited. Without shared learning, progress slows.

What’s missing today that’s preventing UV/EB from moving forward at scale?

Disruption fails not because the technology is weak, but because the organizational home doesn’t exist. Right now, UV/EB coil coating has no home.

Efforts are asked to succeed inside legacy R&D structures, with misaligned incentives, without shared risk, shared learning or a neutral environment. RadTech already connects researchers, chemistry suppliers, equipment providers and end users. The next step is to connect them operationally, not just through conferences or standards, but through shared execution.

What does meaningful progress look like in the near term?

UV/EB coil coating will not scale through one-off trials, vendor-led demos, isolated chemistries or line-specific hero projects. It scales when the process itself becomes the product.

Meaningful progress means answering questions together: where risk can be shared, what can be tested collaboratively and how learning can move faster than any one firm could achieve alone. Success is defined by a running line, not a lab result. Progress comes from building confidence in the process itself, not just proving technical performance in isolation.

RadTech’s BIG IDEAS conference is coming up this March. How does that event fit into the bigger picture you’ve outlined?

BIG IDEAS was created as a forum to explore exactly these kinds of challenges—ones that no single company can solve alone. It brings together stakeholders across chemistry, equipment, manufacturing and end-use markets to examine how UV and EB technologies are evolving and where shared learning can move the needle.

The conference is designed to encourage open discussion around emerging applications, process innovation, market drivers and the broader systems needed to support adoption. Rather than offering predefined answers, it creates space for cross-industry dialogue, technical exchange and collaboration around the barriers and opportunities shaping the future of UV and EB technologies.