Serica®: a premium surface finish for a market-leading paint appearance

Looking for a consistently excellent finish?

Steels with a Serica surface finish enable a consistently excellent paint finish, even when thinner or fewer paint layers are used. Combined with the cost-effective process of hot-dip coating, Serica offers you significant total cost of ownership benefits.
Compared to standard exposed hot-dip galvanised grades, the Serica surface finish reduces the ‘orange peel’ effect commonly visible on painted exposed panels. Serica unlocks the potential for high-end aesthetics in serial production vehicles.

Serica is available at different guaranteed waviness levels, allowing paint engineers to choose the required waviness for adjacent parts with different paint appearance requirements. This enables not only an optimised paint appearance for individual parts but also achieves a perfect harmony in the overall paint appearance of the vehicle. Serica 35, which provides a guaranteed waviness after deformation of 0.35 μm, is the first product in the range and is followed by Serica 32 and Serica 29 which guarantee even lower waviness values at respectively 0.32 and 0.29 μm.

Low waviness

The final paint appearance of a car body panel is determined not only by the quality of the painting process but, to a large extent, by the surface finish of the material substrate. We have optimised our steel production processes for outer panel material to ensure low waviness, resulting in excellent paint appearance. 

Are you interested in reducing your total cost of ownership?

Our experts have multiple years of experience in introducting waviness-optimised steels in the automotive market. With our unique knowledge about the influence of steel surface properties on final paint appearance we can advise you in choosing the most optimal surface finish for your particular application and paint process used.