Coatings World - August 2017

The Marine Coatings Market
August 2017 www.coatingsworld.com Coatings World | 33

Consolidation/Continuing Shift to
Asia Pacific

Consolidation within the marine coatings arena has resulted in more than 85 percent of the market being supplied by six companies, including world leaders AkzoNobel, Chugoku Marine Paints, Hempel, Jotun, Kansai and PPG. In addition to these six, Sherwin-Williams, Nippon Paint, and RPM (Carboline) are important marine market suppliers.

ChemQuest Group market analysis identified a marine coatings shift which continues to occur as the majority of the market has migrated from North America and Europe to Asia Pacific (APAC) – the latter region consuming nearly 75 percent of all global marine coatings. Europe continues to decline in marine coatings consumption, but sales are on the rise in MEA and Latin America due to increased offshore oil exploration, recovery and processing. Being a much smaller market than Europe, North America has shown growth of late. ChemQuest reports that these regional trends are forecasted to continue, with APAC dominating the market.

“Major shipping countries in Europe (Greece, Germany, the Nordic countries – the maritime hubs) and Asia (China, Singapore) are where there is the highest demand for marine coatings,” noted Glud. “Application of marine coatings is still predominantly occurring in Asia in the major ship yards and looks set to continue to be so.”

Environmental Regulations

Environmental regulations continue to have a huge impact on the marine coatings market, with manufacturers keeping a careful watch to on emerging markets like China and Korea.“The effect of the Biocidal Products Regulations (BPR) has massively impacted the marine coatings market as it set limitations on the type and number of biocides you are able to use. This means that all coating suppliers, including Hempel, have developed new products that are compliant with these new regulations,” said Glud. “At

Hempel, we constantly stay abreast of all legislation trends and we are prepared if, and/or when, emerging markets like China and Korea consider implementing the same measures. In general, the marine industry is constantly under increasing pressure to be more and more efficient and compliant with evolving environmental regulations. Hempel invests heavily in R&D to develop products that have a better environmental performance.”

Price Increases

In February of this year Hempel made the decision to increase the prices of certain products as a result of the raw material cost increases of 2016 and 2017. “Raw materials used in coatings, such as copper, zinc and titanium dioxide, have increased significantly in cost over the past two years,” noted Glud. “Raw materials constitute a major part of the cost of manufacturing coatings for the protective, marine and decorative industries, and while we will always try to mitigate these cost increases, there is a limit to what could be absorbed.”