Recoat Our Planet – A Virtual Event about Circularity in Coatings

On 7^th and 8^th March Grolman Group hosted a virtual event to explore topics around circularity with the coatings community: Recoat Our Planet. In 31 sessions the Grolman team discussed trending topics with more than 500 customers, suppliers and experts of the coatings, adhesives, sealants, printing inks and construction chemicals industry from all over Europe and Northern Africa. Novel session formats allowed for an interactive dialogue combined with impulses and contributions by expert speakers.

Trending Topics and Innovative Solutions

All sessions focused on topics around circularity in coatings – first and foremost the panel discussion as one of the highlights of the event: In How Can We Create Diverse Solutions for Circular Innovation? four experts looked at what it means to turn the coatings industry into circularity and explored innovative solutions with promising potential: Despite having different perspectives Daniela Bernacchi (Secretary General at UN Global Compact Network Italia), Dr. Daniela Klein (Sustainability Expert, BASF), Nicolas Dujardin (COO, Oceinde) and Ine De Vilder (Research Scientist, Centexbel) agreed that the inescapable change to circularity and sustainability is a big opportunity for coating companies because it will improve their resilience, their recruiting of professionals, funding possibilities as well as their image on end-users, concluding that “there is no planet B”. The participants use diverse solutions to be more sustainable: While BASF as an international company is using the Mass Balance Approach to increase the share of raw materials based on renewable or recycled feedstocks, Centexbel (R&D for coatings companies) looks at resource and energy efficiency, recyclable, biobased and biodegradable materials. Océince as a family business sources its materials locally or from recycled materials. All these solutions maintain or enhance the performance of materials. Daniela Bernacchi made clear that we can only approach circularity successfully, if we cooperate closer along the entire value chain.

The panel discussion on the second day What is the Outside View on Trends for the Coatings Industry? tried to find answers to the following questions: How will the key coatings end-markets influence the future of our industry? How will their views, ideas and visions on sustainability and circularity influence future coatings, inks, adhesives and sealants? The participants come from different end-market applications: Anna Scheuermann (Architect, communication and Architects for Future), Dr. Sebastian Reich (Managing Partner RKDS&Partners, Sustainable Real Estate) and Florian Wagner, (Managing Director/Founder, Licennium, Circular Economy Consultant, Textile and Automotive) all observe a change of mindset in end consumer markets towards sustainability (circularity, sharing economy), health and safety. Moving towards circularity, the experts pointed out that social fairness is essential as well as a change in the mindset of designing objects. However, trends to approach circularity might sometimes be contradictive. For example, the trend of low tech and the trend of high tech are going in two different directions. It will be vital and interesting to observe this development. From an architect’s view Anna Scheuermann stated that it is not possible to go on only building new things, it is necessary to look at existing buildings and how these can be improved.

Further session highlights span from discussions on the EU Green Deal, the Mass Balance Approach, corrosion protection, bio-based materials to innovative formulation solutions. The insight sessions were fuelled by experts from companies all over Europe: Inovertis, Circouleur, Peinture Robin, Paint 360, Devan, OKO-tech, Novamont, Cefic, BioChem Europe, Liberty Chemicals, Pinfa, Clariant and Vinavil. They stressed the findings of the panel discussions and gave the opportunity to dive deeper into specific aspects: Many changes towards circularity are actually driven by the end-consumer, not by craftsmen or producers. For example, producing companies are very interested in natural raw materials because it is easier to market these to their customers. Furthermore, Grolman’s suppliers introduced creative and sustainable (effect) pigment solutions as well as sustainable high-performance additives, resins, performance materials and fillers. All in all, Grolman was proud to offer insightful presentations by 19 premium suppliers: Alucha, Arkema, BASF, Bruchsaler Farben, Elementis, EPS, Evonik Industries, euroMinerals, ICL, Ink Invent, Nabaltec, Orion Engineered Carbons, Polyscope Polymers, Sappi, Schlenk, Momentive Performance Materials, Superior Graphite, Trinseo and Venator.

Not a Typical Webinar but the Start of a Community on Circularity

More than two years of countless webinars and virtual meetings showed that there is a need for something new. The event took place in a virtual platform where registered persons could find all relevant activities throughout the two days. Recoat Our Planet offered a variety of interactive Zoom sessions as well as other activities: In the media center participants could find deeper information on the topics discussed. In the Community Wall and the Social Feed people could check in, share their thoughts or add songs to a colourful playlist. Finally, participants could meet in the lounge to continue conversations and listen to a live concert by Joe Kiki.

In an effort to hold a 100% self-organised event, all preparatory and organizational tasks were taken over by the Grolman team: from the help desk providing a live chat and the support functions in the Zoom rooms to the session moderation, the Grolman team made sure that the virtual event was personal and had a unique human touch.

For Florian Grolman, CEO of Grolman Group, the event was a great success: “The customer days are just the beginning of many conversations that will continue amongst us after the event. We finally built a platform to work on diverse solutions for circularity in the coatings industry.”

The platform and the recordings are still open after the event. A registration is needed on this page: https://registration.socio.events/e/recoatourplanet/promo-codes/RECOATOURPLANET