The demands placed on paints and coatings are continuously growing. Decision-makers and thought leaders in the coatings industry face great challenges. The European Coatings Show provides an opportunity to meet the innovation leaders and discuss the latest developments in pigments, additives, adhesive and raw materials, intermediates for construction chemicals as well as laboratory and production equipment, testing and measuring equipment, application, and environmental protection and safety of work.

Helios Resins is exhibiting at the European Coatings Show 2023 in Nuremberg once again. We will present our wide portfolio of reliable and high-quality resins, focusing on environmentally friendly resins; i.e. water-based resins, and high-performance acrylic resins. In addition, we will have three product presentations on the topics: The Importance of Certification Schemes in Sustainable Development, Novel Resins for High-performance and Environment-friendly Protective Metal Coatings and Sustainable Resins for Road Marking Coatings.

We are warmly inviting you to visit us at Booth No. 4A-328, Hall 4A to find out more about our latest developments and our wide product portfolio, based on over one hundred years of experience.

Another successful exhibition took place last week in Rellingen, Germany. Our resins team presented the complete road marking resins product range at HOFMANN Technology Day 2022 which is one of the most important events for road markings worldwide.

The event was a great opportunity to gain new contacts for future projects and developments.

Next week, our resins team will exhibit at HOFMANN Technology Day 2022, one of the most important events for road markings worldwide. Alongside high-level trade professionals from all over the world, they will present road marking resins for premium durability and reliability of road marking materials.

Our team is looking forward to meeting you at booth 22. For more information and free registration till November 20th click here.

Find out more about our road marking resins in our brochure.

This week we participated in the Paint & Coatings exhibition in Italy, an event that promotes excellence in technological innovation, a complex and demanding process that transforms ideas into finished products. We had the opportunity to present our company together with our partner URAI S.p.A. and meet the key personalities and innovators from the industry.

As part of the TechFocus taking place during the exhibition, Martin Ocepek, Head of R&D Synthetic resins, gave a presentation entitled Sustainable Resins for Sustainable Coatings. For more information on the topic please visit this link.

This was the first edition of Paint & Coatings Italy, organized in recognition of the importance of keeping up to date on all aspects of innovation, development, manufacturing, and supply of coatings, inks, adhesives and a range of allied and associated industries.

The event brought attention to science and technology and offered attendees the opportunity to discover new ideas, find answers to technical challenges and gain relevant information from the experts.

This year’s Best Practice Day was dedicated to sharing best practices in smart logistics in manufacturing. At the conference, organized by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia – The Electronics and Electrical Industry Association, participants were introduced to practical examples of solutions for agile and digital manufacturing, supply chains, and the technological transformation to the world of smart logistics.

They were presented by international experts, including Radmila Wollrab, Project Manager within the Helios Resins Business Unit at Helios TBLUS, who highlighted the importance of the transition to a sustainable society, which the chemical industry must also follow. She presented the company’s focus on the production of environmentally friendly innovative products using bio-based raw materials. However, agile logistics can affect the green transition with its impact on the supply of sustainable raw materials and the collection and further use of production waste, and the reuse of recycled materials. The main challenge of multimodal transport remains the poor existing railway infrastructure.

Our innovation “Sustainable materials for the coatings of the future” competed alongside 44 Slovenian innovations for national recognition and received a silver national award, presented by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia.

Sustainable materials for coatings of the future represent a new generation of binders in the coatings industry. A group of innovative products developed by our experts has significantly decarbonized the final coating while optimizing the production process by recovering one of the waste by-products for further use as secondary raw material.

We are also the first company in Slovenia to be ISCC Plus certified, which further reduces the carbon footprint of our products. This innovation has enabled us to successfully sell high-value-added products in the most demanding markets in Scandinavia and Western Europe.

The award-winning innovation is the result of close collaboration between experts from different departments within the company. For many years, we have been successfully cooperating also with several external partners and are members of various consortia of research and development projects. Professionalism, successful communication, and well-equipped laboratories are our main advantages in establishing cooperation with development institutes and universities.

Our company boasts many activities in the field of “green” business with the aim of reducing its carbon footprint. We are continuously investing in development and innovative projects, with emphasis on the use of bio-based raw materials, the reduction of production waste and the use of recycled materials. We are also carefully planning to continue the automation and digitization of production to ensure a successful and sustainable business.

We have received the golden award for our innovation »Sustainable polyurethane-modified alkyd dispersions for coatings« on the regional level, which is presented by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia.

Sustainable materials for coatings of the future represent a new generation of binders in the coatings industry. With this group of innovative products and the optimization of our production process by recycling one of the waste by-products, we significantly decarbonized the final coating.

This innovation has enabled us to successfully sell high-value-added products in the most demanding markets such as Scandinavia and Western Europe.

Photos by Tadej Kreft.

We are no longer simply talking about Industry 2.0. We have already reached the 4^th stage of development, where artificial intelligence is opening up new opportunities – especially with regard to a greener and more digital economy.

The acceleration and transition to a green, climate-neutral and “Digital Europe” is one of the biggest goals of the European Union in order to make the European industry more resilient and competitive.

From Industry 1.0 to Industry 4.0

A greener and digital economy is closely related to Industry 4.0. The Internet of things (IoT), Industry 4.0, advanced analytics, digital technologies and big data have great potential to transform all aspects of business. Given that the chemical industry is lagging behind other industries in the digital transformation, an organization that undertakes such modernization efforts can experience great benefits. In fact, according to research by McKinsey, the implementation of E2E (end-to-end) digital technologies across the value chains in the chemical industry can lead to an 8 to 16 percentage point improvement in EBIDTA with the biggest gain coming from production as well as marketing and sales.

The areas of applying artificial intelligence in manufacturing are diverse and promising. Among the many benefits, Industry 4.0 can lead to profitable business models, greater efficiency, a higher quality and improved workplace conditions. By incorporating sustainability into production, technology can, among other things, offer effective solutions in saving energy and controlling emissions.

Helios Resins sees four main areas where investment in digitalization can make a big difference:

• Product development and process optimization,
• Predictive maintenance with artificial intelligence,
• Quality management based on artificial intelligence,
• Logistics and planning

To optimize the process, we firstly needed to update the automation system our synthetic resins plant in Količevo runs on. In 2020, we started the upgrade of the Honeywell TCD 3000 legacy control system with the complete control replacement and migration to Experion PKS. The upgrade is taking place in three stages set to be completed by the end of 2022, while the old hardware and process equipment is slated for removal in 2023. The value of the upgrade is hundreds of thousands of euros. The new system will enable an easier and faster access to data as well as a more efficient management and process control by the plant operators. The upgrade will allow us to use software solutions by different systems integrators, which opens the door to the improvements that will lead to achieving our digitalization objectives.

The next step is the implementation of the predictive or condition-based maintenance strategy at our plants. Predictive maintenance is a type of maintenance that involves the use of sensors (e.g. temperature sensors or vibration sensors) to measure the condition of process equipment over time. The collected data can be used to determine trends, predict failures and calculate the remaining life of equipment. In this way, maintenance is only performed if the data show that the capacity is declining or failure is likely. However, accurately predicting when something will fail is not always straightforward. There are no ready-made solutions for the predictive maintenance of entire systems, so it is necessary to create custom solutions. Nonetheless, the investment is worthwhile, as it leads to cost savings due to an improved assets utilization and OEE, the avoidance of unscheduled downtime and the optimal planning of maintenance activities.

The Effect Of Condition-Based Maintenance As Illustrated In A P-F Curve

To summarize, organizations that are quick to adopt digital solutions for production optimization, remote monitoring, supply chain visibility, waste reduction and opening up to new opportunities will benefit in many business areas, while those that hesitate too long could fail. Helios Resins has been working intensively on defining and implementing strategies where digitalization plays a fundamental role not because Industry 4.0 is one of the buzzwords of our business generation, but because we firmly believe in the success digital transformation can create.

We are proud to announce we have been awarded the EcoVadis Sustainability Silver Medal. This result places our company among the top 25 percent of companies assessed by EcoVadis. This assessment is very important for our existing and future business and successful partnerships with our suppliers, as it allows us to meet future requirements already today.

EcoVadis provides the leading solution for monitoring sustainability in global supply chains, with over 50,000 companies already assessed in over 150 countries across 190 sectors. The EcoVadis corporate social responsibility (CSR) team of international sustainability experts analyzes and crosschecks companies’ data to create reliable ratings, considering each company’s industry, size, and geographic location. The methodology is based on international sustainability standards and supervised by a scientific committee of CSR and supply chain experts.

EcoVadis analyzed 21 aspects of our company, divided into four main fields: Environment, Labour and Human rights, Ethics, and Sustainable procurement. Our overall score reflects the quality of our CSR management system at the time of the assessment.

Helios Resins business unit, part of KANSAI HELIOS, is committed to the principles of sustainable development and relies on clean, energy-saving production technologies and the responsible use of resources. We are further improving our environmental performance through major steps towards our sustainability goals.

Last week, we exhibited at JEC World 2022, the leading international composites gathering which brings together the whole value chain of the composite materials industry in Paris, France and is “the place to be” for composites professionals from all over the world.

The event offers a unique showcase of what composites can offer to various application sectors, from construction to automotive, from aerospace to marine, and an unlimited source of inspiration for participants. Our Helios Resins composites team was pleased to be part of the event once again. Our sales and R&D experts had many visitors to the booth and held numerous meetings with potential and existing customers which are a perfect opportunity to present new developments, trends, possibilities, and future projects and strategies in person.

For the first time, the event also offered a digital platform, JEC World Connect, through which we were able to get in touch with customers who could not attend the event and still wanted to be part of the experience. Together with the newly acquired leads, our team will further explore possible partnerships and cooperation.