Axalta Coating Systems (NYSE: AXTA) has won three 2026 Edison Awards, including two Gold honors for the EcoNextJet on-demand vehicle color customization system and the Alesta e-PRO FG Black fire-resistant coating for electric vehicle battery safety, plus a Bronze for the TintMaster AI paint manufacturing platform.
The recognitions span three distinct Axalta technologies aimed at OEM vehicle personalization, EV battery protection, and the company’s own color-batch manufacturing operations. The Edison Awards have honored innovation since 1987 and are evaluated by a panel of more than 3,000 senior business executives and academics.
The wins mark another multi-award year for the Philadelphia-based coatings supplier. Axalta took home two Edison Awards in 2025 for its Irus Scan handheld color measurement device and its MyColor custom color delivery process, which the company said at the time was its seventh consecutive year being recognized by the Edison program.
“Receiving three Edison Awards in a single year reflects the extraordinary breadth and depth of Axalta’s innovation engine,” said Robert Roop, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Axalta. “Each of these technologies addresses a critical inflection point in their use, whether that’s enabling OEMs to offer truly personalized vehicles at scale; supporting improved safety in electric vehicle batteries; or using the power of AI to solve the persistent challenge of color variability in paint manufacturing.”
EcoNextJet — Gold, Intelligent Painting Systems
The EcoNextJet system is a drop-on-demand vehicle color and design application technology developed for OEM production lines. Axalta said it developed jettable paints meeting OEM performance requirements using new polymers, dispersions, and rheology concepts, and partnered with Dürr for precision robotics and automation and with Xaar for printhead technology. The combined system is designed to allow automakers to deliver individualized exterior finishes at production scale, shifting from a fixed palette to what Axalta described as virtually unlimited customization without sacrificing coating durability or production efficiency.
For collision repairers, broader OEM adoption of digital, per-vehicle custom color application would have downstream implications for refinish color matching, as the underlying palette of factory finishes becomes less standardized across production runs.
Alesta e-PRO FG Black — Gold, Flame Retardancy & Protective Materials
Alesta e-PRO FG Black is a powder coating engineered for thermal stability and secondary fire protection in electric vehicle battery systems. According to Axalta, the coating is designed to resist ignition, expansion, and smoke generation at temperatures up to 1,200 degrees Celsius, helping to delay fire propagation in the event of thermal runaway in a battery cell.
The product lands in a segment of growing interest to collision repairers and insurers contending with post-collision EV handling, battery damage assessment, and the industry’s ongoing debate over total-loss thresholds for damaged battery packs.
TintMaster AI — Bronze, Intelligent Painting Systems
TintMaster AI is Axalta’s internal platform for managing batch-to-batch color variability during tint manufacturing. The system uses historical production data, neural networks, and complementary models to predict outputs and adjust recipes before a batch runs, rather than relying on manual recipe adjustments after the fact.
Axalta said the platform reduces the number of adjustments, or “hits per batch,” and improves right-the-first-time performance by up to 29% in certain manufacturing scenarios, translating to shorter cycle times and less material waste. The benefits flow through to the refinish supply chain in the form of greater consistency in products reaching body shops.
The Edison Awards recognition comes as Axalta works toward the close of its $25 billion all-stock merger of equals with AkzoNobel, announced in November 2025, which will combine two of the collision repair industry’s largest paint suppliers.
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