“The core business of paint production generates three times the gross profit
margin contribution of colorant production,” the study claimed.
An increasing number of coatings
producers are opting just to make the
relatively small number of most used colorants which make up the vast majority
of the output of a traditional in-house
operation. This can cut a significant proportion of storage, transportation and
other costs.
“Currently demand for tinting equip-
ment and systems is growing at a double
digit rate in Europe,” said Dipankar
Bhattacharjee, a key account manager at
the Italian-headquartered tinting equip-
ment makers Corob. “A major influence
has been the desire among coatings produc-
ers to cut storage costs by reducing inven-
tories. Another trend has been a strategy of
keeping close to customers through second-
ary plants with tinting facilities.”
In DIY and professional retail out-
lets for coatings where tinting machines
have already been available at the point
of sale (POS), sometimes for decades,
there has been a rising demand for more
sophisticated equipment combined with
color matching and management soft-
ware and instrumentation.
As a result new tinting machines
have been introduced which are highly
computerized and automated so that
the staff operating them need little
training. Many can be operated by tablets via the internet.
Traditionally many POS tinting facilities have been provided and maintained
by coatings companies. Now this task is
increasingly being done by colorants and
tinting specialists.
In contrast to the fragmented approach of many coatings producers to the
supply of tinting products and services,
some of the leading specialists have been
following strategies aimed at integrat-ing all the stages from pigments supply
through to the provision of color management services.
A merger two years ago between
Chromaflo and CPS Color, previously the
tinting business of the Finnish coatings
producer Tikkurila, gave the U.S. com-
pany a powerful platform in Europe for
the expansion of its integrated colorants
and tinting systems. Some of which cover
customer purchase histories and other
market data.
At the ECS Chromaflo added a new
tool to its Innovatint software package
linking it to the analysis of an even broad-
er range of market as well as social data.
The main purpose of Innovatint has
been to bring together data on colorants
and their formulations with that on sales,
creating what the company says is “a
seamless flow of information between
paint factory and paint customer”.
The latest extension of the software
enables the tinting itself to be more per-
sonalized in meeting customers needs by
enabling cross-referencing of colorants
data with that on demographics.
For in-house tinting plants, Chromaflo
was promoting at the exhibition colorant
products which ensure batch-to-batch
consistency and provide ways of includ-
ing low-cost colorants to achieve a “good
price/performance balance.”
Clariant, the Swiss-based special-
ity chemicals producer which is another
pace-setter in Europe in the integration of
colorant, tinting and color management
services, announced at the exhibition a
new integrated POS tinting system based
on matchmycolor’s Colibri color manage-
ment software and the color management
instruments of Japan’s Konica Minolta.
The Japanese company already acts as a
Colibri distributor.
The system will provide customers
with a tinting facility capable of reaching
a first-time color match rate of 97 percent
with the help of a cloud-based software
able to calculate color collections central-
ly in seconds, according to Clariant.
At the ECS, the company, one of the
few tinting specialists which is also a ma-
jor pigments manufacture, launched a
small and fast POS colorants dispenser
with 24 canisters in three and six liter
sizes able to provide up to six colorants
at a time.
“We have been making the final steps
in completing the integration of the
value chain from pigments to the POS
stage,” said Eugenio Saraullo, Clariant’s
European marketing manager for tint-
ing systems.
The model being pursued by com-
panies like Clariant and Chromaflo in
the tinting segment is not just being ap-
plied in Europe but across the world. A
major reason for Clariant’s choice of
matchmycolor and Konica Minolta for
its new POS system is that they already
have in place a global sales and sup-
port network.
Nonetheless there still seems to be
plenty of potential for further growth
of tinting systems in Europe, not just
in the in-house plant segment but also
in retailing.
“It’s surprising how many coatings
retailers in Europe are still sticking to
the traditional way of stocking pre-
tinted cans of paint on their shelves
in the belief that this is what their
customers prefer,” said Esa Ylimaula,
sales manager at Xemec, a Finnish
manufacturer of automation products,
which launched a fully automated tint-
ing machine at the show. “There is still
a lot of educational work to be done
among retailers and their customers,”
he added.
In addition, as large specialists in
colorants and tinting systems spread
themselves across the world, there will
inevitably be a lot of opportunities for
niche players, particularly those able to
offer exclusive ranges of colors. CW
“An increasing
number of coatings
producers are
opting to just make
the relatively small
number of most
used colorants
which make up the
vast majority of the
output...”
