United States. AkzoNobel announced the opening of its new best-in-class Research and Development (R+D) Center in High Point, North Carolina. It functions as a product development facility and customer service center for the wood coatings business.
The company's community of North American R+D centers that support Performance Coatings' businesses includes laboratories in Troy, MI; Strongsville, OH; Houston, TX; Flying Hills, Pennsylvania and Lancaster, South Carolina.
According to the company, AkzoNobel's R+D centers are transforming the company's investment in science and technology while providing customers with direct access to sustainable product development.
AkzoNobel hosted a grand opening ceremony attended by customers, suppliers, employees and community leaders.
The R+D centers have advanced equipment, which allows the company to reproduce the environment and application methods for customers and ensure that the products provide the expected performance once commercialized. AkzoNobel expects continued growth in North America as the company moves forward.
AkzoNobel's new manufacturing footprint in High Point provides the ability to produce the latest technologies without interruption. The company leverages the capabilities of the new R+D center to consolidate research into solvent-based and water-based products to drive leading innovations for the wood coatings industry.
"We will use the new lab to leverage the latest best practices," said Jim Kavanagh, managing director, industrial coatings.
"The application center will contain the latest application and test equipment that will allow us to mimic our customers' lines and environments," he said.
"We will be able to accelerate the time it takes to scale products for launches without wasting our customers' valuable line time, as we can efficiently and predictably develop, test and industrialize our technologies to meet customer requirements."
"This investment significantly increases AkzoNobel's end-to-end supply capacity in North America for the wood coatings market and allows it to react much faster to trends," added Ted Rhee, Regional Commercial Director, Wood Adhesives and Finishes.
"It will also allow us to better serve our direct OEM customers and our distribution partners who are currently being served from our High Point factory."
