Teer Coatings Limited (TCL), Miba Coating Group TCL employs 59 staff in Droitwich, UK. Founded in 1985 TCL was taken over by Miba AG in April, 2010 and is now an integral part of the Miba Coating Group. In total Miba is an almost >€600M turnover, 3800 employee, international company, headquartered in Austria.

TCL’s main activity is advanced Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) surface coatings for many applications, deposited primarily, but not exclusively, by magnetron sputtering. Its quality system is ISO 9001:2008 certified. Around 1/3 of TCL’s resources are devoted to R&D, 1/3 to the provision of a production coatings service & 1/3 to the design, development & supply of advanced coating & related test equipment. TCL’s strategy is continual investment in modern equipment and R&D, maintaining a worldwide lead in thin film coating technology, which is then exploited commercially. TCL pioneered Closed Field Unbalanced Magnetron Sputter Ion Plating (CFUBMSIP) technology and its key intellectual property, covering both technology & coatings, is protected by patents. TCL has a proven track record of innovation & successful industrial production at the cutting edge of Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) technology. For Hydrogen and Fuel Cell applications, TCL offers a proven ability to deposit relevant thin film coatings, including electrically conductive, corrosion resistant films, catalytic materials, etc. onto a variety of substrates and components, from bipolar plates to particulate catalyst supports. TCL is also engaged in collaborative R&D including photovoltaics and the generation of size-selected nano-clusters, as well as its more traditional development of low friction and wear resistant coatings for engineering surfaces.

TCL has over 14 PVD batch coating machines to supply its contract coating customers. A further 16 coating units are dedicated to coating development and research. In 2010 TCL acquired an industrial PVD, load-locked in line coating system under Phase I of the UK DECC/TSB FC&H demonstrator programme (ref TP AE209D 200089) as part of its contribution to the future Low Carbon Economy industrial supply chain, which will allow the company to investigate semi-continuous, air-to-air processing. TCL has a well-equipped Testing Laboratory, able to characterise the deposited coatings, particularly in respect of their physical attributes, tribological properties, etc. In additional to conventional hardness testing and optical microscopy, TCL has a Micro Materials NanoTest™ instrument for nanoindentation and nanohardness measurements, and a SEM equipped with EDX for chemical composition analysis.

TCL Website