NUREMBERG, Germany - The European Coatings Show earned its status as leading international exhibition for high-quality coatings, paints, sealants, construction chemicals and adhesives many years ago. At the 2011 edition, 887 exhibitors from 45 countries presented their products and services on a record net display area of over 30,000 square meters. Some 26,000 trade visitors rounded off the Exhibition Centre Nuremberg as the hub of the coatings world. With these figures, the 2011 event even beat the previous record set in 2007.

The European Coatings Show and European Coatings Congress are the meeting place for the global coatings community every two years. The event, with an international share of about 60 percent for both exhibitors and visitors, offers an ideal dialogue platform for experts from all over the world. The exhibitors at the European Coatings Show in Nürnberg show the whole spectrum of the latest developments and innovations on the market – from raw materials for coatings, printing inks and adhesives, intermediates for construction chemicals, laboratory and production equipment, testing and measuring equipment, and application systems for safety at work, environmental protection and various services. Besides diverse product properties and competitiveness, the environmental compatibility aspect is gaining increasing importance in research and development, as shown, for example, by the rapidly growing share of water-based coatings and paints.

The European Coatings Congress opened the day before on Monday, 28 March 2011, with the keynote lecture by Professor Matthias Beller from Rostock University in Germany. The winner of the 1st Sustainable Chemistry Award showed that sustainability in chemical production is the key technology of the 21st century. Sustainability was also the central issue of the second keynote lecture by Dr. Erik Risberg, Jotun, Norway. Organizers reported that 648 participants from 40 countries participated in the congress, which featured some 150 papers in 25 sessions.

The European Coatings Award for the best Conference Paper was also presented on the first day of the European Coatings Congress to Dr. Marc Entenmann’s team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation. The paper, entitled “Corrosion Protection with Nanoscale Anticorrosive Pigments in Coatings,” describes the effects of reducing the particle size of corrosion protection pigments. The jury based its decision on the outstanding way in which the paper shows an approach to solving one of the industry’s biggest and most cost-intensive problems: the corrosion of steel.

The next European Coatings Show takes place in the Exhibition Centre Nuremberg from March 19-20, 2013, and the congress starts a day earlier on March 18, 2013.