Decorative functional coating and/or printing of natural fibre/wood-based lightweight composites used for eco-friendly furniture applications - Ecofurn

Project summary

Today the powder coating medium density fibre boards (MDF) technology can be seen as niche technology in the decorative coating market for wood-based furniture applications due to its limitation to the special designed MDF substrates. Other wood-based light-weight panels cannot be powder coated yet. The general aim of the project is to increase the know-how of the sustainable eco-friendly decorative powder coating by the identification, development and modification of light-weight natural fibre/wood- based composite materials suitable for powder coating, the necessary modification of the powder coating process for these substrates and the development of a functional decorative digital electrophotographic printing process on these materials for design individualization. Achieving this goal will be a breakthrough for this eco-friendly technology in the decorative coating market for wood-based furniture applications satisfying future demand for individualized sustainable products.