Gianni Giardina interview: a plant that has grown an experience of more
than 45 years in wood coating industry up.
PM- In the last
ten-year period you could chase the initiation of thousands of plants that used
water-based coatings. Which would the
main purpouses that facilitated that installations? Today can these motivations
be valid for proposing again the use of these paints?
GG- In the next century, the heavy expansion and industrialization
in wooden industry, guided to an overstated purpose of solvent-based coatings,
damages to the environment and people that worked in factories. Even the final purchasers of coated manufacts
were subjected to indirect consequences. For many years thay have breathed the
solvents’ vapors that came from the surfaces of the furniture bought many time
before. For different reasons, everyone
wanted to eliminate solvents, and yet the change started just with the
beginning of the new year.
PM- What has the
change prevented?
GG: The three main characters of this sector, coatings
plants and coaters, should have cooperated. At the end of the last century, the
waterborne paints were unsaleable because:
1) They costed much more than the solvent ones. The lacking used
quantity didn’t allow an economy of scale in research and production;
2) The technicians couldn’t guarantee a repetitive drying.
For example it was very difficult to apply the spray paints, to have regularity
in each part of the coated batch and, as a consequence, to provide the right
quantity with the wet features necessary to paint strip water in film coating.
The accidental variation of one of these parametres meant that it couldn’t be
possibile to pile the batches at the end of the coating line. So painters weren’t
willing to have an uncertain result and to spend more in production costs.
PM – Starting from the
19th century something has changed the scenery so much that thounsands of users
successfully installed water plants in the first 5-6 years. What’s happened?
GG: During the 1999, a young Friulian engeneer who worked in
a regional research center, accidentally changing some wavelenghts, identified
some anomalies on the samples. Through
common knowledges he put them through me. This made me build a prototype and,
thanks to others consolidated technologies, I could develop a deliver coating
water system, without heating the batch and using the air of the environment
for the exsiccation.
With the new technology we called different clients
interested in water-based coatings and so we successfully sold and installed
the first microwave technology plants.
PM – So were coatings
already ready?
GG: Not yet, but by removinq the exsiccation air, the users
started working and producing with water-based paints. In the mean time, in the
six months between the acceptance of the client, the installation and the final
delivery, the technicians could create coatings with the quality requested by
the consumer. Counting on sure consumption and a huge
potential market, the coatings producers throw themselves in the research, succeeding
in reducing prices and giving to the water-based coatings the same features of
the solvent-based ones.
PM- What did you do to
fight the scepticism around water-based products?
GG- We work a lot with marketing. For each new functional
plant, we realized an interview to the client, photos and videos. All the multimedial
material was sent by email to hundreds of potential clients and posted on the
website. So anyone could call into question the words of a client that was
satisfied by its painted production with water-based coatings while it was
piled at the exit of the oven. This had the effect to put an increasingly
attention to the waterborne paints and the new plants.
In the mean time others technologies such as IR and vertical
ovens could have been successfully proposed by other technicians. In just a few
years hundreds of plants have been realized for furniture, kitchens, doors and
windows, contours, chairs, coffers and so on.
PM- What’s happened
then? Why did statistics tell us that the water-based products consumption is
decreasing?
GG:- First let’s specify that the purpose of water-based
paints on wooden doors and windows could never change. The furniture is a
different story.
Thanks to the general crisis developed all over the world,
the furniture sector have seen both the crisis of the water- based products and
of all the application systems projected for big ranges of batches. The
companies, in order to sale and please their clients, accepted also little
orders using plants projected for large volumes of batches. Anyone was ready to
work waterborne little batches, so they hand painted in booths or relied on
third party that worked in booth too.
Working in coathing booths without the right equipment meant
to entrust to the weather conditions for the exsiccation and this is really
dangerous. We must add that, when you apply the coating above both the surfaces
and sides of a patch, it’s important to do it with the same paint in favour of the
final quality.
There’s a waiting time in vaporizing all of the sides of the
patches. It could be a long wait if you use water-based products without the
right plant, so the pot life will surely be already expired and so you must
throw away the coating and make a new one. The new paint could not have the
same shades of the first one. In
conclusion: the coater choose much more safe and rapid solvent-based paints,
fast drying on a carriage, even without adequate plant.
PM- So how do you get
out of it? Do we have to wait for the end of the crisis to not pollute by using
industrial plants?
GG:- Not necessary, exsiccation water-based paints safe
systems exist for single carriages. These systems exsiccate little batches in
few time to turn patches by using the same coating above all the sides. I built about ten for clients that already
worked with little batches. In Italy there are about three technicians that
produce them. They are small low cost
plants.
PM- Ikea is an example
of how we can create a market on sustainability and convince the consumer that
we can and must produce respecting the environment with suitable materials,
including paints. This philosophy has become their commercial strength. The "People
& Planet" program foresees that by 2020 it will be 100%
eco-sustainable. The tendency of the legislator seems to want to limit more and
more all the products considered dangerous for human health, such as
formaldehyde, heavy metals, solvents, and CO2 emissions. How can painters
follow this "Ikea trend" and respect the laws?
GG- Ikea philosophy is irreversible, scaled-world. You can
try to fight just on some segments of the market, even if today the
alternatives could always be found. Some
years ago Ikea was known as a producer of economic and unreliable furniture. Time
after time it invested in quality and marketing. It made the world understand
that the beauty and the bad are individual, because they have to satisfy the
likings of all the world but quality, price and reliability are general such as
the environment respect.
The furniture maker that wants to follow Ikea or similar
companies, naturally for a different clients range, can do it by investing in
design without giving quality, reliability and environment respect up. He would
be defeated before to start fighting.
PM- In summary, what
should we do?
GG- With the crisis the furniture makers had rightly to
adjust their general costs to the sales volume. Now they have to adapt the
plants to the new productive needs. We talk about flexible plants, that
accepted one batch, automated and that use unpolluted paints. The tecnichians
could be the main characters in this adaptation. Then everything must be given
to marketing and communication.
Only
with these purposes they could enter the increasingly aggressive market.
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