Since a long time and in many countries horizontal road marking systems are based on paints. These paints are either waterborne or solvent based. In order to provide good retro-reflectivity on the road glass beads are added during the application stage. These glass spheres are called Drop-on beads.

Beadco’s Drop-on beads are categorized in three groups:

• Echolux® Drop-on beads based on recycled glass material
• Echostar® premium, high performance Drop-on beads, a mixture of recycled glass material and direct melt beads
• Echopure® premium, high performance large Drop-on beads based on 100 % direct melt glass beads

In some systems the beads are blended into the paint during its manufacturing and / or injected in the paint spray during application. These glass spheres are called Premix (Intermix or In-mix) beads. Beadco’s Starmixx® beads are available in various particle size distributions depending on the marking material and required performance level. Starmixx® beads can be supplied with/without anti-skid material (SRT).

Beadco developed a range of surface treatments in order to improve the interaction of the glass beads with the binder. SBP ECO is a specific surface treatment for solvent based paints without aromatic solvent. SBP is more suitable for paints with aromatic solvent and the WBP-range is used for waterborne paints.