EDITOR’S LETTER

Alessia Venturi

Editor-in-chief Surface preparation is always the key! As mentioned in the April edition of ipcm®_Protective Coatings, in our “logbook of the perfect inspector” (a series of articles providing a guide to all the essential aspects and steps of inspection procedures), this summer edition focuses on surface preparation. In particular, it includes some success stories of companies that invested in pre-coating preparation technologies to make a quantum leap in terms of corrosion protection and product durability. We have repeatedly stressed that applying a coating or paint on a perfectly clean surface with the correct roughness profile is the essential starting point for guaranteeing its quality and durability – in other words, the key to highly effective, reliable, and long-term corrosion protection. At a time when sustainability – of development, of technology, of fashion, of everyday life, and so on – is a must, it is good to know that the effective, lasting corrosion protection of assets is one, perhaps the most important, way of promoting sustainability. Indeed, it means improving the service life of assets, saving on maintenance costs, avoiding premature restoration, and indirectly reducing harmful emissions into the environment, waste of natural resources, and so on. In this context, surface preparation, often treated as a “Cinderella” among the phases of an anti-corrosion treatment cycle, becomes the ideal technical measure to achieve superior coatings.

In this magazine, you will find two success stories of firms that have managed to increase the performance of their applied anti-corrosion coatings by implementing automatic shot blasting operations. They have thus not only obtained the direct benefit of higher product quality, but also the indirect benefit of greater flexibility and autonomy in processing. Naturally, surface preparation must also be inspected and checked for quality to determine whether it has been carried out to the required specifications. Moreover, in this issue of ipcm®_Protective Coatings, we finally get back to talking about trade fairs and events. Of course, everyone’s gaze is set on 2022, as almost all events planned for 2021, including Eurocorr, have been transformed into digital events – but this is a very positive sign, in which we want to believe.