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Pilot Coating Center:

Experience and technical support

Our Pilot Coating Center underlines BASF's commitment to the paper and board industry. Its technical infrastructure allows us to simulate and optimize customer processes ‒ from paper coating to printing.

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Our customers and interested third parties can benefit from our excellent experience and technical infrastructure. State-of-the-art equipment, operated by our highly skilled team, facilitates the safe and efficient transfer of technical solutions from lab to paper mill. Under realistic conditions, we test tailor-made concepts together with clients by replicating their production processes for further product optimization. Our Pilot Coating Center enables the efficient transfer of technical solutions, new product developments and optimized recipes while reducing risk and off-spec material. This saves our customers time and money, leading to positive and lasting business relationships.

See the benefits of our Paper Pilot Coating Center Looking for our Adhesive Coating Center? Click here.

BASF_Pilot Coating Center_Scharffenberger

In our Pilot Coating Center, we can simulate almost all common application methods used by our customers.

Volker Scharffenberger

Head of the Pilot Coating Center, since more than 30 years in the Paper Coating Industry

For further information please contact us

Industry insights

The benefits of the Pilot Coating Center

Starting Point

We facilitate the startup of new coating machines geared towards individual requirements and assist in cases of machine modifications. As an example, in the development of new paper and board qualities, we evaluate individual stages of the production process and/or optimize coating recipes.

Solution Finding

Our state-of-the-art pilot coater enables us to simulate the specific process in the mill. This means we can trouble shoot in the areas of processes, coating colors and final paper parameters e.g. printability.

Innovative Optimizer

Realistic simulations in our Pilot Coating Center that come close to industrial scale provide valuable knowledge for the optimized use of coating chemicals. The choice of the right products helps our customers in such feasibility studies to transfer the gathered results into their own processes and minimizes the risk of failure.

Pilot Coating Center

Our Pilot Coating Center comprises of two coaters (smaller pilot coater SM1 and semi-industrial pilot coater SM2), coating color preparation, supercalendering, rewinding and sheet cutting and lab facilities for measurements.

The facility is primarily used to further develop existing coating colors and to demonstrate the performance of BASF products. We are able to carry out tailor-made concepts together with our customers under almost realistic conditions by simulating their production process.

At our pilot coater, we offer all industry-standard coating application methods, including application roll / blade & rod, jet / blade and filmpress. Recently we expanded our application systems by investing in a new curtain coater to strengthen our coating expertise and increase our strategic focus on packaging applications.

Click through the Pilot Coater Machine

Curtain Coater

The non-contact application method of curtain coating produces a particularly homogeneous and defect-free contour coating layer. The base paper undergoes no mechanical stress during the coating process. The coating layer applied by the curtain coater is characterized by a highly uniform fiber coverage and layer thickness.

Combi-Blade

This coating unit is a roll application process, where an excess of coating is applied single-sided and the final coat weight is adjusted by blade (in stiff or bent mode) or rod (smooth or grooved).

Filmpress

The Filmpress transfers a pre-metered film onto the paper. The paper can be coated simultaneously on both sides or just one-sided. The pre-metering of the coating color can be carried out with either grooved or smooth rods. The unit can be used for sizing, pigmentation and coating.