News and Testimonials

For more than six decades, OpenRoad Richmond Auto Body has been a trusted name in collision repair across British Columbia, in Canada. Family-owned and operated since 1960, the company has built a reputation for exceptional craftsmanship, customer care, and continuous innovation. With R-M, this year marks a significant milestone as we proudly celebrate 35 years of partnership between OpenRoad Richmond Auto Body and R-M Paint.

This week in our R-M Refinish Competence Center in France, we welcomed a trainee who experienced R-M’s Wet-on-Wet products in action during a Fiat repair. The trainee also explored our digital color tools, including ScanR, Refinity, and ImagePlus, helping ensure a precise and accurate color match.

Accurate color matching remains one of the most critical and time-consuming steps in vehicle refinishing. While digital color retrieval solutions have significantly improved efficiency in body shops, assessing subtle differences in color, texture and effect can still be challenging, particularly when working with black and dark effect colors. To help R-M body shops manage the entire refinishing process more efficiently, Surventis provides Refinity®, its cloud-based digital platform that connects products, services and business solutions in one ecosystem. Within Refinity, the Color module supports painters with color identification, retrieval and match evaluation throughout the color matching process.

Emil Frey Racing delivered an outstanding performance at the sixth DTM round at the Nürburgring. Matteo Cairoli was taking pole position with the #14 Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo on Saturday, the fastest race lap, Driver of the Day honours and a dominant start-to-finish victory with nearly ten seconds in hand. On Sunday, another win was within reach until a pitstop problem cost precious seconds and dropped Matteo Cairoli to 13th place. In the Teams' Championship, Emil Frey Racing sits fourth with a 39-point deficit to the leading Winward Racing.

A new chapter begins: Surventis presents integrated solutions for the body shops of the future. The company presents an integrated ecosystem of coatings, digital solutions, consultancy and innovation designed to help body shops improve performance and long-term competitiveness. At Automechanika 2026, visitors will experience how connected solutions and selected new Refinity® capabilities are shaping the future of the body shop.

Surventis, formerly BASF Coatings, today launched as an independent company, backed by global investment firm Carlyle in partnership with QIA, with BASF holding a 40 percent stake. Surventis will strategically focus on reliability, quality, service, and performance for its customers. With a new name and brand identity, Surventis will continue to develop, produce, and market coatings and surface treatment solutions for industrial, automotive, and refinish customers worldwide. Its portfolio spans well-known brands such as Chemetall ® and R-M®, visible with the new by Surventis logo.

R-M Automotive Refinish is strengthening its role in robotics-enabled Automotive Refinish by combining coatings expertise, digital color management and application process know-how. Through close collaboration with OEMs and automation partners, BASF Coatings aims to help shape the future of automated paint application in body shops. Drawing on its experience in repair processes and connected digital workflows, R-M supports customers in implementing robotics-enabled solutions for more consistent, scalable and future-ready repair operations.

With aspaara®, R-M accelerates AI-driven transformation across Europe, the Middle East and Africa as a complementary solution to Body Shop BOOST, while aspaara AI® can be deployed both as part of Body Shop BOOST and as a standalone solution, complemented by consulting services.
In this context, with aspaara®, R-M accelerates AI-driven transformation across Europe, the Middle East and Africa as a complementary solution to Body Shop BOOST, and aspaara AI® can be deployed both as part of Body Shop BOOST and as a standalone solution, complemented by consulting services.

The growing presence of New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) is reshaping automotive refinish requirements, placing higher demands on quality standards, color accuracy, and process efficiency. With its latest approval from Geely Auto UK, R-M, a premium refinish brand of BASF Coatings, strengthens its collaboration with the OEM and underscores a shared commitment to precision, efficiency, and sustainable body shop operations.