fourth largest country market—after
Germany, the United States and
China—and one in which we know
can grow,” said new CEO Ton Büch-
ner, who took over the company in
April. Last year the company’s sales
rose six percent globally, while sales
in Latin America, led by Brazil, were
up 11 percent.
The rise in figures is no accident
of economics. “In 2010, we initiated
country-specific sales goals for Brazil,
India and China; Russia is still something of a missing link among the
BRICs for us in terms of sales,” said
Oskar Bosson, AkzoNobel’s manager
of communications for the Performance Coatings and Specialty
Chemicals businesses, in Amsterdam. “At that time, we decided to
double our Brazilian sales of about €750 million to €1.5 billion by
2015; as of last year we were up to about €950 million already.”
AkzoNobel’s new CEO Ton
Bü chner took over the company in April.
Among segments, architectural paints are key to AkzoNobel.
“Decorative paint is our largest segment in Brazil in terms of sales,
followed by the pulp and paper segment,” said Tim van der Zanden,
the director of external affairs for the company, also in Amsterdam.
“In Brazil there is a growing middle class, especially in Northern states like Pernambuco, so we are expanding our decorative
paint plants and combining some footprints. We are working
very hard on the Coral brand and we are focused largely on the
mid-to-premium levels of the market,” said Büchner. The company estimates that the “C” level of decorative paint encompassing the Brazilian middle class has expanded from 50,000
customers to 100,000 customers over the past seven years.
One inventive marketing tack AkzoNobel is pursuing for decorative paints is the donation of materials to the small red brick
shacks of the Santa Marta slum, which rises up a long, steep hillside in Rio de Janeiro. There, the company began painting houses
in 2010, and has since opened up a neighborhood office to coordinate with residents for the eventual painting of all 1,500
houses there. The return on the undisclosed amount of time and
materials the company has invested in the humanitarian project
thus far has been a factor of four or five times greater, over a
matter of a few month’s time, according to Jaap de Jong, AkzoNobel’s country director for Brazil and regional director for
Latin America, in Sao Paulo. Since the slum has been partially
repainted, it has even become a tourist attraction of sorts.
One decorative segment product launch that has been very
successful for the company is its Coral Rende Mais, a paint concentrate that can be thinned for extended coverage. The product
has led sales in the overall Coral line, as middle class consumers
simultaneously seek better quality paint and better value, according to Jaap Kuiper, the company’s managing director for decorative paint within Latin America, in Sao Paulo.
In automotive paints, AkzoNobel is a major supplier of after-
market paints, providing the national supplies for OEMs like
General Motors, as well as the auto repair industry at large, said
Almir Gozzi, the company’s director general for Latin American
automotive and aerospace coatings, in Sao Bernardo de Campo,
in Sao Paulo state. Automotive and aerospace coatings represent
15 percent of the company’s total performance coatings business
unit. Latin America accounts for about eight percent of global
performance coatings sales.
AkzoNobel has donated materials for the ongoing painting of the
Santa Marta slum in Rio de Janeiro.
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