PINTURAS HEMPEL SA

Their core work

Pinturas Hempel SA is the Spanish subsidiary of Hempel A/S, a global manufacturer of protective coatings and paints for marine, industrial, infrastructure, and decorative applications. Their core competence is the large-scale formulation and continuous production of surface protection systems — coatings engineered for durability, low friction, permeability control, and long-term resistance to environmental degradation. In H2020 research, they serve as an industrial validation partner, testing how nanotechnology-enhanced surfaces perform under real manufacturing conditions and commercial performance requirements. Their role bridges fundamental nano-materials research and the demands of continuous, mass-market production.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (NanoFASE, 2015–2019), Pinturas Hempel SA focused on understanding how nanomaterials in coatings behave once released into the environment — a safety, compliance, and regulatory intelligence exercise for an industrial producer. By their second project (NewSkin, 2020–2024), the emphasis shifted entirely toward industrial production: manufacturing processes, scale-up, durability performance, and building an open innovation ecosystem to accelerate commercial uptake of nano-surface technologies. The trajectory is clear: from asking "are our nanomaterials safe?" to asking "how do we manufacture nano-enhanced products at scale and bring them to market faster?"

Pinturas Hempel SA is moving toward becoming an industrial anchor in open innovation ecosystems for advanced surface technologies — a partner that brings manufacturing capacity and commercial validation, not just research participation.

How they like to work

Pinturas Hempel SA has participated exclusively as a consortium partner across both projects, never taking on a coordinator role — a pattern consistent with large industrial companies that contribute applied expertise and real-world testing capacity rather than project management overhead. With 71 unique partners across just 2 projects, they operate inside very large, internationally diverse consortia, which suggests they are comfortable navigating complex multi-stakeholder research structures. They are brought in for industrial grounding: to validate that what works in a lab can survive in a factory.

With 71 unique consortium partners across 19 countries from only 2 projects, Pinturas Hempel SA has unusually broad network exposure for their project volume — both NanoFASE and NewSkin are large, pan-European consortia. Their network spans most of the EU and likely includes major nano-materials research institutes, universities, and industrial manufacturers.

What sets them apart

As the Spanish arm of a global coatings manufacturer with decades of industrial production experience, Pinturas Hempel SA offers something most academic or SME consortium partners cannot: direct access to continuous, mass-scale surface coating production and an established industrial customer base to validate and absorb new technologies. They are not a technology developer in the traditional research sense — they are an industrial test bed and commercial gateway, capable of taking a nano-surface innovation from lab to product line. For any consortium that needs to demonstrate real-world manufacturing readiness, their involvement is a credibility signal to both reviewers and future clients.

Highlights from their portfolio

• NewSkin
  As an Open Innovation Test Bed project focused on industrial uptake of nano-surface technologies, NewSkin represents Pinturas Hempel SA's most commercially ambitious research engagement — directly aligned with their core business of bringing advanced coatings to market at scale.
• NanoFASE
  The only project with confirmed EC funding (EUR 159,750), NanoFASE addressed the environmental safety of nanomaterials — a strategically important topic for a coatings producer whose products release nano-additives over their service life.