Covestro Expands Special Films Application Center in Shanghai

Covestro expanded its Specialty Films Technical Competence Center in Shanghai, increasing its support capacity for customers across the Asia-Pacific region.

Covestro expanded its Specialty Films Technical Competence Center (TCC) in Shanghai, strengthening its capability to support customers across Asia-Pacific in applications ranging from smart automotive surfaces to humanoid robots and secure identity documents.

"In today's dynamic markets, our customers must innovate faster and product lifecycles are becoming increasingly shorter," said Caroline Wolff, President of Covestro Asia-Pacific Specialty Films. "The expansion of the Shanghai TCC enables us to go beyond being a material supplier and become a true development partner. By strengthening our prototyping and simulation capabilities locally, we can serve customers across Asia-Pacific with greater agility, accelerate development cycles, and pave the way for next-generation applications such as smart automotive surfaces and humanoid robots."

Enhanced equipment and expanded capabilities
The TCC advanced its Film Insert Molding (FIM) capabilities, a technology that enables the production of plastic components with decorative or functional surfaces in a single step. This technology enables the manufacturing of smart automotive interior and exterior surfaces with integrated functions such as lighting, heating and control. New equipment includes a larger screen printing machine capable of processing polycarbonate films up to nearly twice the previous size. This enables prototyping of larger components such as automotive front grilles, where sensor and display elements can be integrated directly into exterior surfaces.

The renovated facility provides integrated FIM support covering appropriate resin and film selection, screen printing, forming, cutting and final molding processes. Flexible mold systems reduce prototyping costs while shortening development times. Design feasibility simulation allows early-stage validation of concepts before full production.

Flexible printed electronics for robots
The expansion also includes specialized equipment for Flexible Printed Electronics (FPE), consisting of electronic circuits printed on flexible substrates such as TPU, used in wearable devices and robots. A specialized screen printing machine designed for conductive inks provides precise control during circuit printing, while a new thermoforming machine allows testing of circuit performance when transformed into complex three-dimensional shapes. Maintaining electrical performance during forming remains one of the key challenges in flexible electronics. This infrastructure supports new applications such as tactile sensors in high-precision robotic hands and electronic skin for humanoid robots. The TCC also provides customers with consulting on process conditions and circuit design.

The Specialty Films TCC is part of the Covestro Asia-Pacific Innovation Center, which brings together research and development capabilities from different business units and the central group innovation function under a shared technical and digital infrastructure. Guo Ruijing, Head of Covestro Asia-Pacific Group Innovation and Sustainability and Head of the Asia-Pacific Innovation Center, explained: "The expansion of the Specialty Films facility demonstrates our commitment to building world-class innovation capabilities closer to customers in Asia-Pacific. This step will also foster closer collaboration between business units and functions within the Innovation Center."

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