Simply exceptional living spaces (CP 2/2009)

The German furniture maker MAJA and BASF Coatings work hand in hand, with flat-pack furniture for IKEA being one of their products. This successful cooperation is now to be extended to new areas.

“Malm”: The IKEA chest of drawers, finished with BASF Coatings paints, features a clear-cut design and is combinable in a multitude of ways. (Pictures: IKEA)

The Malm chest of drawers is one of the most popular pieces of painted furniture at IKEA. One of the producers of this piece of furniture are the MAJA MÖBELWERKE furniture factories in Wittichenau, to which BASF Coatings has been supplying UV paints for seven years.

The requirements of the Swedish furniture store are clearly defined: furniture produced for IKEA must be free of contaminants, high-quality and family friendly. “We not only expect a sustainable and consistently high level of quality, but also that our suppliers keep their finger on the pulse of the times with regard to technical developments,” explains Helmut Witassek, IKEA Austria.

What exactly goes into producing the shiny surfaces of the furniture cannot be seen by the consumers with the naked eye.

“Particularly for residential furniture, as a coatings producer it is important to pay attention to the materials used.

Thus, for instance, no contaminants should be released into the environment,” says Friedhelm Redlich, responsible for Foil and Panel Coatings Business Development at BASF Coatings.

The quality of the furniture produced by MAJA is checked on a continuous basis. “Regularly keeping tabs on the process monitoring allows us, together with BASF Coatings, to guarantee our customer IKEA comprehensive safety and consistent quality, even when dealing with high numbers of units,” says Ralf Kohl, Plant Manager at MAJA MÖBELWERKE.

Permanent control: Color and surface quality of the wood panels’ paint are checked by Maja and BASF Coatings technicians. (Pictures: IKEA)

System partnership

MAJA produces the Malm chest of drawers in the standard colors of White, Black and Pink. T

he color and surface quality are constantly checked by MAJA with the technical support of BASF Coatings. Various test instruments are used to determine the precise values. If any deviations were to be found, the pieces of furniture in question would have to be reworked if necessary, which would represent a significant time and cost outlay.

This is the reason why BASF Coatings and MAJA constantly work on further enhancing color and quality control. In order to be able to implement this type of project better together, BASF Coatings and MAJA MÖBELWERKE GmbH have also entered into a system partnership with the new supply agreement.

“We entered this – also new for us – form of working relationship with BASF Coatings in order to be a strong partner together for IKEA,” explains Kohl. Among other things, the system partnership envisages using project teams that make it possible for us to work together on a new level.

“We are no longer just responsible for simply supplying the coating materials, but now also for actively supporting MAJA in optimizing processes,” says Wolfgang Kranig, head of Precoatings Europe at BASF Coatings.

In doing so, the coating producer’s employees can draw upon the wealth of experience that they have already built up through successful in-house projects.

350 tons of paint

The joint project groups not only deal with technical issues, but also environmental topics. “One key issue, for instance, is how it is possible to further reduce the quantities of solvents used for cleaning the system,” explains Redlich. In addition, it is planned to further advance improved application processes and paints in regular technology discussions.

Over the course of a year, BASF Coatings supplies 250 to 350 tons of paint to MAJA – including body fillers, primers and topcoats.

These three layers are applied with rollers one after the other while the particle board panels pass through production on a flat conveyor belt. After three to four minutes, the coating of the surface is complete.

The MAJA factory has around 100,000 chests of drawers coated in this way per month with paints from BASF Coatings. The flat-pack pieces of furniture are then shipped off around the world – to Germany as well as to China and Japan.

www.maja-moebel.de