High Performance Pigments Update
The sluggish U.S. housing market and ailing auto industry mean HPP
manufacturers will face another tough year.
BY KERRY PIANOFORTE
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Manufacturers of high performance pigments (HPP) faced yet another challenging year. As the conomic downturn continues to impact the U.S.
housing market and the recent automobile manufacturer’s
crisis has severely curtailed auto production, demand for
HPP has been soft.
“With the two major industries, housing and automotive,
suffering from the economic downturn the demand for colored
high performance pigments are drastically reduced,” said
Falko Orlowski, coatings business manager, North America,
Clariant Corp. “In the face of the increasingly competitive
marketplace many manufacturers of paint and coatings try to
find cost effective solutions. One growth area for HPPs is the
decorative market where higher quality systems become more
demanding.”
According to Thierry Chevrier, vice president, dispersions
and pigments for BASF in North America, the market for high
performance and special effect pigments was soft during the
first quarter of 2009, similar to the rest of the economy.
“However, BASF is optimistic that the U.S. government’s stimulus funding plan will help lead to some improvement in the
market by year end, continuing into 2010,” he said.
“High performance and special effect pigments track their
coatings segments,” said Mike McHenry, segment head, coating effects for Ciba in the Americas. “As expected, these pigments are down in the automotive and some of the other
durable goods sectors. However, we have seen strong growth
with these pigments in the electronics and packaging markets. Color is still a major driver in consumer purchase decisions and high performance and special effect pigments help
our customers to differentiate their offerings regardless of the
market they serve.”
“During the economic downturn, we found there was a
sharp decrease in the purchasing volume of high performance
pigments,” said Rick Campbell, president, Trust Chem USA.
“For our company, the sales decrease is less for high performance pigments than for conventional pigments. We have also
seen sales to the ink industry decrease more than sales to the
coatings industry.”
“While there continues to be positive strong trends toward
the usage of high performance and effect pigments, overall
2009 has been a challenging year for the pigments market
worldwide,” said Mehran Yazdani, vice president, marketing,
performance pigments, Sun Chemical. “The U.S. is currently
BASF, under the Ciba business, recently introduced Xymara
Fireball effect pigment.
one of the most challenging regions of the world for the pigments market thanks primarily to a struggling automotive
market and housing slump that has led to a decline in auto
sales, home building and paint use. Similar challenges in the
automotive and architectural markets can be found in Europe.
In addition, we have been faced with high cost inventories that
continue to impact our profitability.”
According to Robert Poemer, business manager for
Heucotech, the market for HPP pigments has been very
heavily impacted all over the world but particularly in the
NAFTA region. “This is due to their link to the automotive,
coil and powder coatings industry as well as several other
high performance applications,” he said.
Although overall demand for HPP has been slow, Toyo Inks
reported a rebound in emerging regions. “Due to the economic
slowdown, a drop in demand for high performance pigments
has continued until the first quarter of 2009,” said Yu Adachi,
corporate communications, Toyo Ink Mfg. Co., Ltd. “After the
second quarter, demand had rebounded particularly in the
China and Japan markets. This was due in part to govern-ment-initiated subsidy programs to boost consumption of
household appliances.”
According to Yazdani, China, India and Eastern Europe, are
the markets where per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is
expected to grow most rapidly. “Related to the GDP growth of
these emerging markets will be the growth in the demand for
high performance pigments for the coatings of durable goods,
buildings and the automotive sector,” he said. “From the market segment viewpoint, we expect continued growth in cosmet-
