China
The growth of AkzoNobel’s powder coatings division in Asia, especially China
coincides with positive developments in
several major downstream markets for
powder coatings, including home use
electric appliances, automotive and construction. For example, from January to
May in 2017 China sold a total of 643
billion yuan of home use electric appliances, an increase of 15. 9 percent over
the same period of 2016.
With relatively low starting points
in the market Chinese powder coatings companies are actively expanding
their customer base and increasing their
capacities so as to enlarge their competitiveness generated from economy of
scale. Fujian Wanan Group is a major
domestic powder coatings producer in
south China. The company recently reported that their sales increased by 36. 7
percent in the first half of 2017. And the
company is constructing a new 20,000
tons per year powder coatings plant, and
will put the new capacity into operation
in 2019. Anhui Meijia New Materials
Co., Ltd. increased their sales by 17. 55
percent in the first six months of 2017
compared with the same period last year.
Their net profit also increased 57. 48
percent in the same period. Meijia’s customers include some major electric appliance brands such as Midea, Aux and
Changhong. Midea Group is the largest
home use electric appliance producer in
China, if not in the world.
Chinese powder coatings
companies introduce
powder coatings to new
applications.
Market competition is getting fiercer
in traditional downstream markets for
powder coatings. The growth of some
markets such as automotive is slowing
down too. So it is inevitable that some
powder coatings companies are trying
to break into new markets, such as the
wood furniture market.
The market potential for wood furni-
ture is huge in China. In 2016, the rev-
enue of the Chinese furniture industry
was 855.9 billion yuan, an increase of
8. 57 percent over 2015. And in the first
three months of 2017 total revenue of
the Chinese furniture industry grew by
12. 61 percent, and total profit increased
by 12. 47 percent, compared with the
first quarter of 2016. Furthermore, en-
vironmental benefits and shorter curing
periods for powder coatings compared
with liquid coatings are driving more
and more companies to carry out valu-
able experiments.
Dojon Powder, a subsidiary company
of Doxu Chemicals, is actively promot-
ing the powder coating process into the
wood furniture market. Right now the
company said they have the ability to
coat medium density fiberboard (MDF)
and other wood panels with powder
coatings. Because the market acceptance
is not high for powder coatings to be ap-
plied on wood surfaces, Dojon does a lot
of work promoting their powder coating
process and demonstrating their coated
wood panels to their potential customers.
Similar to the American market, pow-
der coating manufacturers in China are
fighting hard to get into new applications.
The companies focused on liquid coat-
ings consider powder coatings producers
competitors. Technical service engineers
of liquid coatings companies are unwill-
ing to share information on customer
demand with powder coatings chemists,
sometime even within the same company.
This somewhat restricted the market de-
velopment of powder coatings.
But the fundamental obstacle for
powder coatings to grow into new ap-
plications is the development of pow-
der coatings technology itself. Powder
coatings process needs curing ovens,
electrostatic treatment, etc. The customer
may not want to invest extra time and
capital to learn a new technology, espe-
cially when they have installed a paint-
ing process, which adopts water-based
coatings. After all, the motivation be-
hind changing solvent-based coatings to
water-based coatings in China is the in-
troduction and implementation of more
and more environment protection regula-
tion. And if water-based coatings solved
the pressing environmental problem, why
bother to make extra efforts?
It is foreseeable that the process for
wood furniture to be coated by powder
coatings in a large scale will be tedious for
the companies who pursue this direction
and slow for the whole market to witness.
It is only in the initial trial run stage for
powder coatings to be adopted by wood
furniture companies at the moment.
Although some companies have already
pioneered the development for powder
coatings to be used on wood panels, most
leading wood coatings companies such
as Carpoly and Dabao are still observing
cautiously this new trend, and large scale
market activities are still rare in the market. But one optimistic phenomenon is
that powder coatings companies are not
alone to push forward this new trend and
some home furniture brands like Boloni
are actively involved into this process too.
In July Boloni, Allnex and Aleco worked
together to introduce wood furniture
painted with powder coating in July in
Guangzhou. Aleco, founded in 2016, has
a demonstration powder coating plant in
Foshan, Guangdong province. CW
