Zoccarato Industrial Coatings: a 60-year evolution

Ours is a history of industrial painting which finds its focus in cataphoresis treatment. A treatment that on the one hand reminds us of our roots, on the other it projects us into a European and international dimension.

To understand a story it is necessary to define its context: we are in the early 1960s, in the period that has been defined as the "Italian economic miracle", an era between the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century characterized by the economic boom and technological development, established after the initial reconstruction phase after the Second World War.

It is a moment of opportunities and new needs, both in the private and industrial sectors, which lays the foundations of today's world: new entrepreneurial realities linked to the most diverse product sectors are born, accompanied by an entire ecosystem of companies with the aim of providing services to those companies that request it and that decide to rely on external partners specialized in the execution and supply of certain processes and materials.

It is in this panorama that our company was born, founded by Romeo Zoccarato in 1962 and who, coming from many years of experience linked to precision painting, decided to inaugurate his own industrial painting business with the same spirit that animated his days: love for his work and respect for the customer, precision of workmanship and attention to detail, order and cleanliness.

It is a story with a strong local flavour, in a path of continuous growth: from the origins, in which spaces and personnel were limited to those of a workshop, up to the present day, in which 180 people work in an area of ​​50,000 m², making our company one of the most important industrial painting companies serving the most prestigious industries in the world.

As mentioned, it is also a period of technological development: consolidated practices are no longer enough, scenarios are opening up that have never been seen before and production possibilities that until a few years earlier seemed precluded. These are the iconic years of television and cinema, of the spread of well-being and the use of durable consumer goods (think of refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines), of cars and motorways as we understand them today, capable of connecting the entire country by bringing together geographically distant realities, the years of the dawn of mass tourism. As habits and customs are changing, so too are work processes, influenced by cultural contamination and emerging technologies.

This economic and social boost naturally goes hand in hand with the increase in competition, with a series of companies starting to offer products and solutions similar to each other: this is where the need to differentiate emerges. It is also for these reasons that the quality of workmanship is increasingly appreciated and sought after by the manufacturing and commercial sectors.

And here, in the continuous search for improvement, the foresight and entrepreneurial spirit of Romeo Zoccarato was seen: alongside the typical liquid and later powder coating, he decided to combine a treatment technology that had never before been seen in our country, discovered in his own research and study paths conducted throughout Europe: this is how in the early 1980s Zoccarato opened up on the market as one of the first companies with cataphoresis treatment.

It's a turning point: cataphoresis allows you to protect metal products from corrosion like no other type of painting, making any item treated with it virtually incorruptible from external agents. And given that many of these items are in close contact with rain, snow, earth, sun, wind and salt air, it is easy to understand how it is not just a "simple" aesthetic coating, but a real factor capable of bringing added value to the original product, extending its life cycle and increasing its quality also from the end customer's point of view.

It is no coincidence that this is a technology that is still extremely widespread today in the automotive, earthmoving machinery and materials, nautical and furniture sectors, just to name a few.

The process conducted in our plant consists of several initial cleaning and pre-treatment phases, where through alkaline solutions, mains water, phosphating with zinc salts, demi and passivation, the products are prepared for the actual cataphoresis treatment. These are necessary steps, sought after by the highest quality standards and required by industrial specifications, to make the process itself impeccable and to ensure that the paint is subsequently deposited without any type of problem.

(In the following video, the products come out of the alkaline tank of our cataphoresis painting plant, ready to move on to the second step of the washing and pre-treatment process)

Once these steps have been completed, cataphoresis painting takes place: in short, it is an electroplating process with which the artefacts, previously connected to the negative pole of an electric generator, are introduced into a large tank where electrodes connected to the positive pole are also immersed. The electric field that develops gives rise to electrochemical phenomena that cause the paint to deposit on the piece.

Before entering the oven, a further stage certifies the quality of the treatment: the artefacts are washed with the ultrafiltrate, the liquid part of the bath from which the pigmentation is removed, extracted with special equipment, which then falls back into the tank to minimize paint losses.

At the end, as also happens with other industrial painting techniques, the product enters the oven which, at the correct temperature, will polymerize the paint making it permanent.

After years of constant expansion and improvement, our cataphoresis plant is currently of considerable size in terms of daily production capacity and size of the items that can be handled, as well as for the extreme quality of the service offered. The system, automated and controlled from a remote location thanks to video terminals, is managed by highly qualified staff and the contents of its tanks are checked several times a day in a dedicated laboratory.

It is also for this reason that we can consider it as the heart of our company, a strong point capable of differentiating both the customers who rely on it and our own reality, which over the years has made it an essential strong point. Zoccarato, 60 years of history and successful projects: on the one hand it reminds us of our roots and our entrepreneurial history, on the other it projects us into a European and international dimension.