boost sales of International Paints’ Chartek intumescent fire
protection coatings.
In Russia the country’s expanding oil and gas sector has
both bolstered demand for protective coatings and has been
providing finance for infrastructure schemes, which also
require protective coatings.
“Within the Russian energy sector, it’s not just oil and
gas production which need coatings but also new pipelines,”
explained Petri Jarvinen, director of business support and
marketing at Tikkurila, the coatings division of Kemira of
Finland. “The earnings from oil and gas is financing a huge
amount of infrastructure development where the requirement is for low-cost but efficient coatings.”
European coatings producers also benefit from the enormous sums of money being poured into oil, gas and other
energy projects in the Middle East.
They have been re-organizing their operations in order to
target the mega-projects in the region related to the oil and
gas industry, like offshore rigs and platforms and onshore
power plants and refineries. Jotun’s protective coatings
sales increased by 40% last year in the Middle East,
against 30% in Europe.
The Norwegian company has set up an Offshore Concept
Team, based in Singapore, to collect and analyse information on the offshore industry to help improve sales and
marketing and customer management in the Middle East,
as well as in Asia and elsewhere in the world.
One of Jotun’s biggest offshore customers is Seadrill, a
Bermuda-based offshore contractor, which has 37 drilling
units and 13 under construction around the world. Jotun’s
global support for the drilling specialist supplements a deal
which covers Seadrill’s offshore units in the North Sea.
In line with a policy of establishing itself as a single
source of protective coatings for customers, Hempel last
year reached a five-year agreement with Saudi Aramco,
Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company with the world’s
International Coatings Scene
EUROPE
biggest crude oil reserves. The deal extends not just to the
supply of coatings but also IT services, logistics, technical
services and new product development.
The sort of environmental and safety standards which
have been helping push protective coatings sales in the EU
are being introduced in regions around Europe.
As a result there is likely to be a greater use of waterborne
and high solid coatings based on epoxy and polyurethane
resins both within and outside Europe. At the same time
applications of solvent protective coatings could decrease.
“In Russia, for example, the biggest demand is for solvent
protective coatings because they are cheaper and easier to use
than waterborne but even there the use of solvent coatings will
shrink,” said Jarvinen. “Waterborne coatings are popular in the
Scandinavian protective market but elsewhere the trend
seems generally to be towards high solids which are growing
strongly in Western Europe as a whole and will gradually
become more common in Eastern Europe as well.”
However, in Western Europe, in particular, tougher environmental standards than those required by EU legislation are becoming more prevalent. These are linked to
safety and performance standards as well.
The Norway’s petroleum sector, for example, has a range
of standards labelled Norsok which set thickness levels and
numbers of coats while laying down specific test methods.
The country has an inspection system covering corrosion
protection and surface treatment standards, which is being
extended to other parts of Scandinavia.
In the rapidly growing renewable energy market in
Europe, standards are being laid down by wind turbine
manufacturers which go well beyond regulatory limits.
Vestas of Denmark, the world’s leading supplier of wind
power system, has drawn up a black list of chemicals which
cannot be used in its turbines as it strives to ensure that its
machines have completely environmentally friendly life cycles
through to their recycling or disposal. CW
Improving the quality of coatings and plastics, and making
that quality measurable is the challenge we live up to every
day at BYK Additives & Instruments. For our customers, that
means excellent quality and the highest level of satisfaction.
For us, it means: improve & prove.
www.byk.com
