Axalta, a leader in digital colour management for the automotive aftermarket and the name behind the Cromax, Spies Hecker, Standox and Syrox refinish brands, has announced that it has sold its 60,000th spectrophotometer, with 10,000 sold in the past 15 months. The rapid increase in recent sales is attributed mainly to a strong global digitisation trend. These increasingly popular handheld digital tools are an accurate and fast way of colour matching that boosts the efficiency of bodyshops.

Dr Martin Wulf, Axalta’s Colour and Technical Manager for Refinish Systems in Europe commented, “Adopting a digital approach to colour matching and retrieval is a global trend that started 25 years ago when Axalta was one of the first coatings companies to offer a digital device and software to refinish customers. Today, we encourage all of our users to future-proof themselves and optimise their efficiency by moving to digital colour measurement.”

Axalta say using the latest-generation spectrophotometer and cloud-based colour software is easy. Refinishers simply take the colour readings from a vehicle’s paintwork using the spectrophotometer, which then wirelessly sends the readings to Axalta’s online global colour database. The colour matching software searches more than 200,000 constantly-updated formulas, and where necessary, automatically adjusts the closest formula to provide refinishers with the best possible match, which can then be selected on a smartphone or a tablet and sent via WIFI to an IP scale for mixing the colour formula. The whole process is more accurate, more efficient and more profitable.

Dr Wulf added, “The future is now. The spectrophotometer is clearly a valuable part of modern refinish work. We expect to see continued and significant growth globally as bodyshops adopt a completely digital way of working. For customers who are looking at going digital, we will support and help them make a seamless transition to a fully digital colour management process.”