Russia
friendliness of paints and they did not
know that some components accumulated in the human body and pose a real
harm to the health. Scientific studies shed
some light on this problem and coatings
producers refused to use these pigments,
but in Russia some firms keep using it up
to date,” Pausov said.
So, it turns out that in Russia the cheaper the coating, the more problems with
safety it has. And, according to Fedotov,
this leads us to the next problem, as the
Russian state procurement system is built
in a way, when at the competitive bidding
procedure cheapest coating always wins.
As the result, it is widely used not only in
the riser blocks of flats, but also in schools,
hospitals, kindergartens and all other
buildings of the social infrastructure.
“Just recently we participated in the
competitive bidding procedure in Moscow
on the supply of paint for a company op-
erating in the field of housing and com-
munal services. One of the firms offered
a penny price for their product – so low,
that it was even difficult to imagine some
coatings actually can be produced for
this money. After that RQPA purchased
this production for inspection. Following
painting, the smell from the coating did
not go away completely, although even
the organic-diluted enamel ceases to smell
after a while. This is what we have to
breathe in. Such stories occur because of
the imperfection of the competitive bid-
ding system in Russia,” Natalia Nikitina,
brand-manager of Tikkurila Russia, said.
According to Fedotov, one thing he is
really happy with is that consumer aware-
ness in Russia reached record heights, and
according to recent opinion polls RQPA
has held, up to 80 percent of citizens in
the country are concerned over the quality
and environmental friendliness of paints.
It is especially important now, amid
the economic downturn in Russia, as it
shows that even in harsh times customers
are not willing to sacrifice their health to
purchase cheaper products.
Improvements are on the
pipeline?
According to Nikitina, one of the key
problems of the Russian coatings industry,
is that regulations on the quality of coat-
ings are severely outdated and don’t take
in account the recent scientific discoveries
on some particular components and raw
materials. RQPA, however, anticipated an
improvement in this area with the recent
adoption of the new common technical
regulation on coatings production within
Eurasia Economy Union, an economic or-
ganization comprising of Russia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.
“In 2016 the Russian government
has released new instruction, prohibit-
ing the use of some harmful substances,
such as lead, but as long as those rules
were voluntary, everyone ignored them.
Nevertheless, the new technical regula-
tion ‘On safety of coatings’ developed by
Kazakhstan for the Eurasia Union, has al-
ready been signed by Russia and currently
is in the adjustment stage between other
members. So, we expect the paper has to
be signed within one to two years from
now. After that, Russian sanitary service
Rospotrebnadzor should take on obliga-
tions to supervise the quality of coatings
at the domestic market,” Fedotov said.
It is believed the new regulation will
stipulate some up-to-date requirements
to the coatings manufacturers in terms
of quality of their products and will introduce a new system of monitoring.
That said, Fedotov emphasized, one
should not think that, when the regulation is adopted, it would bring immediate
positive effect. At the moment, he said,
Rospotrebnadzor has a lot of other problems with counterfeit and sub-standards
products on the grocery shelves in Russia,
in particular in dairy industry, so it seems
Russia still has a long way to go towards
the better quality of coatings. CW
Some unscruptulous businesses produce so-called “garage paints.”
