Editorial

With preparations for the 21st Surface Finishing Congress (INTERFINISH) of the IUSF, to be held in late November in Hong Kong, in full swing, following on from the 20th Congress held in Nagoya, Japan, and featured in Transactions, we are perhaps reminded of the significant shift in centre of gravity of the surface finishing industry from America and Europe in the west to South Asia (notably India) and the Asia Pacific Rim, as a result of the close relationship between manufacturing and its industrial surface finishing supply sector. Where manufacturing has gone the attendant product and component surface finishing is bound to follow. The speed of this shift due to globalisation of the supply chain has been remarkable. Since China caught up with the USA in its manufacturing output (and thus surface finishing output) in 2010 according to the UN Aggregate Accounts data, in the aftermath of the 2008/09 recession, its output is now double that of the USA, in a mere 14 years, with other countries in that area showing similar impressive growths in manufacturing. In addition, where manufacturing has grown in this way, the local R and D effort has also grown, to accommodate the necessary product and process improvements demanded by customers. Evidence of this is shown clearly in the increased submission of research papers to this and other journals from universities in these areas in recent years. Thus the comforting thought held by some in the west originally that the more complex, high-value manufacturing (and finishing) and technological know-how would remain in their hands, with only the low-end work being exported to lower-cost areas, is being shown increasingly to have little validity.

While globalisation of supply chains has given undoubted benefits, the uncertain world that we now live in, created by recent and current political events, may well have led many industrialists to have concerns about supply chain security, and the value of maintaining a homegrown part of the industry, particularly, for those products of a sensitive nature. We are living in truly interesting times.

In this issue, we feature a comprehensive report by Andreas Richter (FEM, Schwabisch Gmund) and event organiser Wolfgang Hansal (EGM, Wiener Neustadt) of the successful 11th European Pulse Plating Seminar held jointly with EAST Forum 2024 in Vienna, in March. Papers presented at this event will be featured in the journal later this year. The issue also carries an article by Violaine Mendez (Indestructible Paint Ltd.) on the company's ongoing research efforts to develop anticorrosive Cr-free primers for Al alloys, for aerospace applications.

Suleyman Can and colleagues (Bilecik Seyh Edebali University, and Durden Plastic Products and Adhesive Films Inc., Bilecik, Turkey) report on the development of coloured Ni/Cu₂O bilayer films on large area ABS substrates by electrochemical deposition, and the effect of plating bath temperature on the deposition of Ni on Cu substrates is discussed by Canute Sherwin (Atria University, Bengaluru, India) et al.

The effect of ${\mathrm{V}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_7^{4-}$ anion intercalation on the microstructure and corrosion resistance of MgAl layered double hydroxide films on LA43M Mg-Li alloy is reported by Jumei Zhang and colleagues of the Xi'an University of Science and Technology, People's Republic of China, and Yani Wang et al. (Department of Applied Chemistry, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin, People's Republic of China) describe the preparation of Bi₂Te₃ and Bi₂Te₃/reduced GO thin film thermoelectric materials by electrodeposition in dimethyl sulphoxide. Lastly, the wear behaviour of plasma-sprayed composite Ni-Cr coatings with nano Al₂O₃ particles has been studied by C. R. Raghavendra and K. P. Jhansilakshmi from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Government Engineering College, Haveri, India.

We are sorry to announce the sad and unexpected recent death of our good friend and active Editorial Board member, Dr Lars Pleth Nielsen. He will be sorely missed and we hope to feature a commemoration of him in the next issue.