Coatings World - July 2012

Kansai Paint Co., Ltd.
Osaka, Japan
www.kansai.co.jp

PUBLIC COMPANY
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1918
REVENUE: $3.250 billion ; (2010: 2.8bn)

MARKETS SERVED
• Automotive coatings
• Industrial coatings
• Decorative coatings
• Marine and protective coatings
KEY EXECUTIVES
Shoju Kobayashi, chairman; Yuzo Kawamori, president;
Koichi Imada, executive vice president.

Operating in Japan, Europe, the U.S., Southeast Asia, India nd China, Kansai Paint Co. Ltd. offers a broad range of coatings solutions for various markets. It divides its business into automotive ( 42 percent), industrial ( 29 percent), decorative ( 20 percent), and marine and protective ( 9 percent) segments.

With $3.250bn in sales revenue for 2011—up from $2.8 billion the year before— Kansai Paint operates three state-of-the-art automotive paint plants from its headquarters in Osaka, Japan and is the leading supplier of automotive coatings to Toyota, Suzuki, Nissan, Honda, Peugeot and Renault worldwide.

In 2011, after a year of bitter opposition, a competition watchdog approved Kansai Paint’s $260 million takeover bid of South Africa’s Freeworld Coatings. The deal represents a significant push into the continent for Japan’s largest paint and coatings maker.

In Japan, Kansai’s largest operating segment, in the area of auto-
motive OEM coatings, the company has been putting its efforts into
developing new technologies such as the Waterborne 3-Wet Coating
System, which gives a high-quality external appearance and actively
works to reduce emissions of CO2, as well as its clear top coat with
improved scratch resistance. The company said it is striving to open
up new markets through these new technologies. In the second half
of the term under review, the subsidy system for Japanese auto buy-
ers who purchase an eco car came to an end and this impacted the
number of vehicles being manufactured but despite this Kansai said
it still managed to record an increase in sales. In the auto refinishing
area, Kansai bolstered its range of environmentally friendly coatings
as well as reinforced its color-matching online system, striving to ex-
pand its sales. In industrial coatings, as demand recovered supported
by strong exports for construction machinery, the company said its
coatings for beverage cans were in high demand due to the intensely
hot summer and as a result recorded an increase in sales. In decora-
tive coatings, the slump in new housing constructions and capital in-
vestment in the private sector continued throughout 2011, so as a
consequence Kansai said it focused on repainting and recoating ex-
isting structures and as a result it was able to record an increase in
sales. In the area of marine and protective coatings, Kansai has ex-
panded sales in ship repair, namely anti-fouling paint for the vessel’s
hull and functional coatings for repairs, but due to the slump in the
new ship construction market, its sales for the term under review de-
creased. In the field of protective coatings, in order to receive orders
for bridge repairs Kansai promoted its high value-added products
but both public and private investment in these structures continued
to fall, so as a consequence it registered a decrease in sales for this
area. Kansai’s sales in Japan totaled $1.885bn, an increase of 2.3
percent on the previous term.

Kansai Paint launches Ales Cool

Kansai’s new Ales Cool is a solar radiation-reflective coating that can reduce the heat energy that is generated on a sun-exposed roof. Ales Cool forms a coating film that can efficiently reflect sunbeams containing solar (infrared) rays. Ales Cool benefits from a raw material that is effective at reflecting infrared rays which is contained in both the topcoat and the undercoat and this creates a double-blocking effect that delivers improvements in heat performance. By applying a coating of Ales Cool on the roof, the rooftop temperature during the hottest part of the summer can result in temperatures cooler by some 10 to 20 degrees centigrade the company said. This can lead to reductions of up to 40 percent in terms of the cost of electricity consumption in order to keep indoor temperatures at a comfortable level, and energy conservation simulations have shown that this reduction in electricity consumption also translates into a reduction of as much as 40 percent in CO2 emissions.