Impreglon strengthens presence in the UK.
Second plant with focus on optical coatings.

Effective January 1, 2014 Impreglon has further reinforced its worldwide coating network by acquiring Optical Coating Technologies (OCT) in Tamworth. After the acquisition of TOP Oberflächen of Würzburg last year, which not only coats plastic components under clean room conditions but also has developed its own line of high performance top coats, Impreglon was looking to expand these coating opportunities within the group. OCT opens up two new fields: new applications for optically clear abrasion resistant, chemical resistant and ant-fog coatings on safety glasses, lenses, visors etc.; and the opportunity use Impreglon's own scratchproof coatings in the new plant in Tamworth.
OTC also applies metal coatings such as gold, silver, copper and aluminium on to plastics, metals and glass using vacuum deposition, which provides good synergy with the Woonsocket, USA, plant.
The third strand to the OTC business is the stockholding of ready coated polycarbonate sheet. As the UK and Ireland distributor for KRD of Germany, OTC can provide off the shelf sheets and profiles for the signage and digital display markets.
The parties agreed not to disclose the purchasing price.

With 33 plants in 14 countries on 4 continents Impreglon is one of the global leaders in surface technology.

Polymer concrete no match for Impreglon.

The mixing of resin based concretes often poses a problem to both the client and Impreglon. For the client the resin, once it’s activator has been added, will stick to the mixing equipment, necessitating regular cleaning. Add in the bulk material, such as Calcium Carbonate, and you have a sticky abrasive compound. And it’s the abrasive nature that shortens the life of a non-stick coating.

One of Impreglon UK’s clients uses a Polyester resin bound Calcium Carbonate as a polymer concrete mix for creating platforms. The concrete is fed into the platform mould from the mixing unit by means of an Archimedean screw. So not only was an abrasive material being handled, but it was being moved through a very confined space – Archimedean screws work when inside a tube only slightly larger in bore than the outside diameter of the screw flights. The problem was that the cured resin necessitated the removal of the screw every eight hours for it to be cleaned. Not only was this a time consuming exercise, but a man was employed in the fitting shop primarily to clean up the screw.

The Impreglon answer had to have good non-stick or easy clean properties for Polyester resin and be capable of withstanding the abrasive nature of Calcium Carbonate. The answer was MC3005. This is not usually the first choice for non-stick applications but it is both a high build coating and quite tough. Thus one might expect it to have a good lifespan in such an abrasive environment.

In fact MC3005 lasted for about three months before wearing away. In that time the screw only had to be removed for cleaning a handful of times. MC3005 proved to be self cleaning for most of the time. When it did have to be removed, the cured resin came off very easily. Thus Impreglon managed to save our client both production downtime and cleaning time.