Russia
September 2017 www.coatingsworld.com Coatings World | 51
impossible to check components on the
presence of harmful substances. The accredited laboratories in the Russian coatings industry can test some basic
parameters of paints, such as covering
power, but lead and formaldehyde are a
completely different story” he added.
The equipment needed to perform
such tests is very expensive and it is
available only in state scientific research
laboratories, which have other fields of
expertise and are not authorized by the
Russian Federal Agency on Technical
Regulating and Metrology to deal with
the quality of paints, Fedotov explained.
Today in Russia there are no independent laboratories able to identify harmful
substances in coatings, so as a result irresponsible supplies that allow the presence
of such things in delivered components
are not even at risk of being caught.
“The members of RQPA request the
data on the consistence of the delivered
products from components supplies and
jointly check it on truthfulness wherever
it is possible. So, our organization can
guarantee that products with our seal of
excellence are free from methanol, heavy
metals and lead pigment chromate, plus
the share of volatile compounds and other harmful substances listed in our basic
documents doesn’t exceed the maximum
allowable levels,” he said.
At the same time, the situation is more
complicated with formaldehyde, as due
to the harsh winter conditions in Russia
it is widely used to prevent freezing of
coatings during transportation. In some
cases, customers are trying to measure
the emissions of formaldehyde, when the
coating is already on the surface, but for
obvious reasons this way is not perfect.
Fedotov said that RQPA’s members were
discussing this problem in early August
and agreed to establish some joint techni-
cal basis to check the products on formal-
dehyde within the organization.
In the meantime, the intentional use of
prohibited substances appears to be a much
more concerning part of the problem.
“In particular, when we talk about the
yellow or brown paints, it is possible to
make such color using lead pigment chro-
mate. It is prohibited everywhere in the
world, including in Russia, but our busi-
nesses keep using it anyway, primarily be-
cause it is cheap,” Fedotov admitted.
“When the RQPA was founded, it
started struggling against this problem
and performed huge scientific work to
determine how producers can refuse to
use lead pigment chromate in favor of
organic pigments, without an increase in
the production costs. The work was quite
successful, but some coatings producers
still keep using lead pigment chromate,
and this is only one example of such prac-
tices,” he added.
The price matters
When talking about the quality of coatings in Russia, the segment of “garage
paints” must be also mentioned. In this
case, the quality issue becomes not just
concerning, but really alarming. The very
name – “garage paints”– this segment received because most manufacturers here
are small-scale private businesspeople,
who don’t have production facilities and
simply mixing up some components to
produce the cheapest possible coatings in
their own garages.
As a rule, the manufacturers of garage paints are not registered officially,
don’t pay any taxes and don’t see any
point in complying with safety or quality
requirements.
According to Egor Pausov, the head
of the training unit of Tikkurila Russia,
those manufacturers do everything possible to cut the production spends to be
more competitive on price.
“In past century people weren’t aware
about such thing as the environmental
Some coatings have poor quality
because of the components.
Not all coatings in Russia have sufficient quality.
Counterfeit coatings are a huge problem in Russia.
