Resins Market Update
for technical support, service and supply reliability.
“Communication with our customers is absolutely the key,”
she said. “We have a significant number of custom-developed
products which provides each customer the exact product they
need. Understanding the customer’s specific performance crite-
ria and their cost goals is important. Our goal is to communi-
cate early in the development process to understand what the
potential opportunities are for balancing performance with an-
ticipated costs. This communication continues throughout the
relationship. Ongoing, open dialogue is important. Our philoso-
phy is: no surprises!”
Alberdingk Boley’s Sayed-Sweet said that customers are in-
deed demanding low- or no-VOC resins to meet high-perfor-
mance needs. “We are also seeing price pressure building at
the same time raw material cost are increasing,” she said. In
order to continually meet customer demand and to stay ahead
of the competition, Sayed-Sweet said that innovation is the key.
“Productivity improvements in manufacturing is also a continu-
ous process,” she said.
Larry Schnieders, Global marketing manager, Paints &
Coatings at Lubrizol, said that many customers are asking for
products with greater durability.
“Some examples are for resins that maintain the aesthetics of
the surface longer, protect the surface against corrosion longer,
or don’t require recoating as frequently,” he said. “Customers
are also demanding products that are easier to process, require
less formulation, and are environmentally compliant in the
countries where they do business.”
Achieving the balance between customer demand and
price consideration is not a new challenge, Schnieders added.
“Reaching the balance that works for both Lubrizol and our
customers requires a high level of information sharing. Lubrizol
strives to understand the outcome that customers attempt to
achieve and collaborates with them to arrive at a solution that is
beneficial to both parties. Often, this approach requires the di-
vulgence of more information than the past. Therefore, Lubrizol
insists on secrecy agreements to ensure confidential information
is protected. Once achieved, maintaining customer intimacy re-
quires continuous efforts to keep pace with changing needs,”
he said.
In addition to VOC requirements and durability, customers
are also increasingly interested in UV-curable technologies as
well as resins with self-cleaning and self-healing properties, according to Sun Chemical’s Venturini.
“The challenges Sun Chemical faces are the same as every
other company—rapidly changing tastes and market needs,
government regulations and consumer preferences,” Venturini
said. “Sun Chemical’s philosophy to deliver ‘solutions, tailor
made,’ shapes our relationships with our customers to learn
and understand what drives their markets and helps us de-
velop and bring them products that they specifically need to
compete and succeed.”
Venturini added that Sun Chemical wants to continue be-
ing known as the company that is a partner to its customers.
“To be able to achieve this, our customers have to know that
we are here to help them with their problems. Backed with 17
research and development centers and the strength of DIC, our
parent company, our unparalleled global presence allows for the
delivery of local service and support that is customized to the
markets it serves. Our coatings customers also can benefit from
the fact that Sun Chemical offers a broad portfolio of both pig-
ments and polymers,” he said.
As the stability of the resins market is solidified, customer
demands are evolving. Dumain, of Arkema, said that just a few
short months ago, he would have pointed to performance as
customers’ primary demand. As the market strengthens, however, he said that customers are focused more on establishing a
reliable, long-term, consistent supply.
“Strategic relationships between formulators and suppliers
are more important than they have been in a really long time,”
he said. “The greater demand, combined with tightness in key
feedstock markets, make those relationships crucial to compet-
ing in the current marketplace.”
Dumain agreed that both performance and innovation re-
main important. “Customers expect solutions that will allow end
users to be more productive and more profitable. Technologies
that allow faster curing at lower material utilization with fewer
energy inputs, all while carrying a smaller environmental foot-
print, will continue to be sought after. The importance of sus-
tainability will more likely be driven by customer demands than
as a response to government regulatory threats. Customers are
still looking for sustainable solutions, but with technology ad-
vances outpacing regulatory demands in many cases, they can
focus their efforts more on securing supply of the best technol-
ogy answer for end-user problems,” he said.
Strategic relationships with formulators are very important
to identify global end user customer needs, Dumain added. “If
we can develop products that excel across geographies, our customers can leverage those products to make their operations
more efficient and cost effective.”
Green technologies
Environmental regulations have become stricter across the
globe, and for companies with international presence, meeting
these regulations can be a challenge. Regulations vary by country and meeting them can be a costly endeavor. To rise to this
multi-national challenge, resins companies frequently launch
new eco-minded products.
One of the latest ‘green’ technologies that Sun Chemical has
launched is a series of products under the WATERSOL line, said
Venturini. A group of self-emulsifying acrylic resins developed
by DIC for automotive interiors, WATERSOL water-based resins have been designed to deliver performance properties similar
to solvent-based resins and demonstrate excellent corrosion resistance, high hardness, pigment dispersability and low-temper-ature film formation properties.
“We also recently launched WATERSOL WQS-364, a UV-curable water-based polymer for water-reducible coatings on
plastics which contains a hydrophobic multi-functional methacrylate and urethane acrylate core surrounded by a hydrophilic
