Novelis How to Save Money, Time and Risk in Traffic Sign Production

Novelis is the world’s biggest aluminium-rolling company. With long experience of 40 years in aluminium coil coating Novelis produces high quality pre-painted aluminium coils and sheets and even ready-stamped blanks — ideal for traffic and road signs.

Aluminium: the material of choice for traffic signs

The traffic and road sign industry requires a light material with high colour consistency and perfect surfaces. As the legal regulations regarding backside surface coating or corner radii vary from country to country, the production of traffic signs is complex.

Aluminium is therefore the most favoured material worldwide in the production of traffic signs. It has a long lifetime for outdoor use, and has many advantages:

• Non-corroding material
• High strength but still light and workable
• Only one-third of the weight of steel
• Can be bent, roll-formed or processed in numerous ways
• Can be recycled unlimited times
• Provides money back from recycled scrap or used signs

Novelis coil-coated aluminium for traffic signs

Novelis pre-painted aluminium is the ideal material for the production of traffic and road signs. Due to the high quality of its surface coating, it can be immediately processed without any further pre-treatment required, and is already cut to size. Alloy and coating of the material conform exactly to the special requirements of traffic and road signs. The customer’s process is easy and economic.

Novelis traffic sign production program

We offer a full package for the international traffic sign market: our products can be delivered either as coil, sheet or blank forms.

Novelis’ production programme includes:

• Alloy: 1000, 3000 and 5000 series
• Pre-treatment: chemically degreased and pre-treated
• Width: up to 2,000mm
• Thicknesses up to 3.1mm
• Ready-stamped blanks such as circles, triangles, squares, rectangles etc.
• Sheets in a maximum size of 2,000mm x 5,000mm

Aluminium coil coating

The aluminium coil coating process offers a unique surface quality that can be reproduced from production to production. This ensures both high productivity and high quality.

The clear lacquer on the front side is suited for application with reflective film. In cooperation with leading suppliers of reflective film Novelis has chosen paints and primers that allow the right adhesion of those films on the aluminium surface.

The reverse side of the material is delivered painted according to national specifications with regard to paint thickness, colour, etc. for optimal weather resistance. Upon request, our aluminium road signs can be laminated with protective film. The blanks are manufactured according to national requirements and, upon request, with corner radii.

No risk and high flexibility for traffic sign producers

Sign manufacturers benefit from the fact that material is already painted and even cut to size if required and can thus optimise their production process. The risk of production scrap is reduced by leaving the painting process to Novelis.

The pre-painted and pre-treated blanks not only save production time, but also lessen the manufacturing risk for the sigh maker. In addition, the coil coating process employed in the manufacture provides a paint and surface quality that cannot be attained at the same cost by any other method.

Furthermore, instead of running the cleaning, primering and painting processes with all curing times needed in between, the manufacturer just takes a sheet or blank from stock, cuts it to size if needed and can immediately start the lamination of reflective film.