At the beginning of the second year of Pulvercoat project we had already finalized the process optimization in order to prevent any pre-reaction during the preparation of Pulvercoat formula. We applied some adjustments to achieve a production target of 30 Kg (pilot line scale up) and used them to validate & optimize the Industrial Production (300 Kg and 600 Kg batches). During the second period of the project, we prepared samples taken from industrial production for Certification and Demonstration purposes.
During this first semester of the second year in the project execution, we had a big demand of resources in order to make wider the range of operational parameters without any big impact on properties of our coating and, in the meantime, ensuring a smoother production process.
Our certifications were performed in external laboratories. We did the same tests done in the first year of project in order to compare and to have a demonstration about constancy of coating properties for both materials coming from pilot plant and from industrial lines. Only one of the tests performed on our coating is still running (Florida Test) due to the extremely long exposure time (3 years of total exposure with check at the end of every year), all the other tests gave us a positive results so far.
Overview of exploitation and dissemination:
Since January 2019, we launched a dedicated website that we kept updated during all second year with news and trials: www.pulvercoat.com (.it and .eu).
In December 2020, Pulverit launched a promotional video related to the project. It has been uploaded in YouTube both in Italian and English languages. The video shows to potential customers that Pulvercoat is similar to any other powder during the application phases but it is extraordinary versus competitors regarding the curing condition (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Wxgw2O9Do(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)).
We advertised Pulvercoat in specific magazines as Verniciatura Industriale No 613 (May 2019), No 629 (September 2020), No 631-632 (November-December 2020) and No 633 (January 2021) and IPCM No 65 (January 2020), No 66 (November-December 2020) and No 67 (January-February 2021).
European Convention for Constructional Steelwork (ECCS) presented PulverCoat in various meetings of ECCS technical committees to international experts in steel construction. There is also a permanent advertisement on ECCS Homepage. Articles and advertisements have been publicated in the Journal “Steel Construction Design and Research”.
We prepared promotional material that will be distributed by the end of March 2021, this consists in a color swatches collection call anodizzati made with Pulvercoat product.
During the second year of the PulverCoat project, despite the difficulties created by Covid 19 we have developed several dissemination activities focused in the strength of the exploitation goals of the company, we changed several time our program and moved our effort to activities less affected by the pandemic situation. We are going on time with our plan for Commercialization and Exploitation and several marketing plans for different countries have been created. The results indicate that PulverCoat has innovative features creating a lot of interest in several different markets and customers. The industrial trials are promising, we have three customers ready to start, we are confident that their conversion to our product will be a breakthrough in the commercialization of PulverCoat.
