Automotive Refinish Market
October 2015 www.coatingsworld.com Coatings World | 45
“Bodyshops favor partners that help them meet these needs by
providing high quality paint with efficient application processes
accompanied by process consultancy.”
Asia Pacific currently leads the global automotive refinish coat-
ings market. Driving growth of the Asia-Pacific market is increas-
ing car parc, rising purchasing power and rise in number of road
accidents. Asia-Pacific will continue to lead the market during the
forecast period due to rising demand of vehicle customization.
“Collision centers in Asia-Pacific are focusing on becoming
better businesses by modernizing their operations, often with the
consultation of multi-national paint suppliers,” Whittleston added.
Trends
There are many factors impacting the auto refinish market today, such as safety features on vehicles, collision repair center
consolidation, pressure from insurance for faster cycle time and
lack of skilled professionals.
“I would like to focus on one key challenge that is going to
continue to increase in relevance and is important to BASF,”
said Whittleston. “That challenge is the pressure on distribu-
tion. Distributors are really feeling the pressure from increased
discounts and collision repair center expectations to maintain
an equivalent service level at a lower price. At BASF we are fo-
cused on ensuring that our distribution partners are financially
strong with efficient and effective operations to meet customer
needs. This is more than just additional incentives. It’s about
creating an aligned strategy for the end user, it’s about simplify-
ing business processes, it’s about aligning adequate resources to
support and define who will do what and when. Critically, it
is about accountability and trust. BASF believes that working
closely with our distribution partners ensures any redundancy
across the supply chain is removed. This combined performance
cannot be matched by others.”
Existing and emerging VOC legislation to reduce solvent
emissions continues to make an impact on product technology
requirements across the globe. “In North America for exam-
ple, stricter compliance legislation, of the sort currently exist-
ing in Canada, California, Delaware, Maryland and Utah, is
expected to be enacted soon in Arizona, Pennsylvania and New
York,” said Outcalt. “Legislation in China is also occurring.
The challenge for manufacturers is to provide product technol-
ogy that conforms to these sustainability requirements without
sacrificing performance, quality and color matching excel-
lence. PPG’s prime solution to the challenge lies in its acrylic
latex waterborne basecoat technology. Our ENVIROBASE
High Performance and AQUABASE Plus waterborne refin-
ish systems are now in use in some 30,000 collision centers
worldwide. The fact that more than 5,000 shops in the US
have upgraded to this new technology without being required
to meet the stricter low VOC standards is good evidence that
Standox Lends Engineering and Coatings Support to Formula
Student Motorsport Competition in Austria
Standox, one of the three premium
global refinish brands of Axalta Coating Systems has helped a team of students from the University of Applied
Sciences in Vienna, Austria, to paint a
racing car they designed for the 2015
Formula Student competition. This is
the second consecutive year that Standox has supported the OS.CAR team
of students. OS.CAR stands for Old
School Car. Axalta’s participation is part
of the company’s on-going commitment to promote the role of engineering in automotive design and coatings
manufacturing and application.
Formula Student is a well-established international educational motorsport competition held annually for
engineering students and usually forms
part of a degree-level project. Within
the space of a year, students must design, cost, build, present and enter a
single-seat racing car for a series of
static and dynamic competitions.
Andreas Auer, Marketing and busi-
ness development manager for Axalta’s
Refinish Systems in Austria, explains how
the project first came about: “In 2014, we
got in touch with the team of engineering
students at Vienna University as they were
looking for some paint to undercoat and
finish their racing car for the Formula Stu-
dent competition. With Axalta’s strong ex-
perience in motorsport, including Formula
One TM and NASCAR, we embraced the
idea and went to visit the students. Their
presentation was so persuasive, and they
were so clearly passionate about the proj-
ect, we decided to partner with them on
more than just the coatings.”
The students first brought the car, the
CR-113, to the Axalta training center near
Vienna. Standox technicians advised and
supervised the students as they helped
to prep the vehicle for painting, with the
technicians completing the job using one
of Standox’s highly professional paint sys-
tems. The CR-113 successfully passed all
technical checks and began competing
in August 2014 on the Red Bull Ring in
Spielberg, Austria, and made it through
to the final round of the competition.
This year, the students were back at
the Axalta training center with the new
CR-115 car, called Mako, named after the
type of shark. Again, Standox technicians
supervised the students with the initial
masking and sanding, and then took over
the difficult task of painting and airbrush-
ing the front nose of the car with a menac-
ing-looking shark’s face, mouth and teeth.
Staff from Axalta in Austria and engineering
students from the University of Applied Sciences
in Vienna, Austria with Standox coated “Mako”
design 2015 Formula Student car (Photo: Axalta)
