615 CUBE 05 July 2013 www.informationresearch.co.uk cube@brggroup.com +44 (0) 208 832 7830 Argex announces purchase agreement with PPG Argex Titanium Inc. announced that it has entered into a long-term supply agreement with PPG Industries Inc. relating to titanium dioxide (TiO2) pigment suitable for various end-use applications by PPG. PPG is one of the world’s leading coatings and speciality products companies, serving customers in construction, consumer products, industrial and transportation markets and aftermarkets. PPG operates in nearly 70 countries around the world, with sales in 2012 of US$15.2 billion. The supply agreement and a concurrently executed research services agreement between PPG and Argex, whereby PPG will provide continued research and development support to both optimise Argex pigment grade TiO2 for paints and coatings and combine PPG’s coatings technology and expertise with Argex’s TiO2 proprietary processing technology, replace the collaboration agreement signed by the two parties that was CONTENTS ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Dow announces mechanical completion of first acrylic monomer plant in the Middle East Drytac ® sells UV liquid coating division to Advanced Finishing Technologies, a member of the Digital2You USA network Brenntag expands its service facilities in Thailand ShawCor announces contract to provide pipe coating services for the Edvard Grieg project in the North Sea Trust Chem Europe growing Bordeaux Digital Printink continues to expand in the UK: partners with FTC (UK) to deliver coatings and liquid laminates A PROFILE OF THE MEXICAN PAINT INDUSTRY 1 2 3 4 4 5 6 6 announced in April 2012. Roy Bonnell, Argex President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “The agreements with PPG are a significant milestone for our company. Our relationship with PPG has greatly assisted with our stated goal to move towards production. We are very pleased that PPG will be our first customer for TiO2 pigment suitable for use in its architectural paint production. We are also pleased that we will continue our collaboration with PPG to optimise our product for other various end-use applications.” “These agreements and our ongoing collaboration with Argex are demonstrative of PPG’s stated intent to leverage our expertise to secure an enhanced supply of critical raw materials,” said Charles F. Kahle II, PPG Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Research and Development, Coatings. PPG previously manufactured titanium dioxide using the chloride process at its former Natrium, W.Va., chemicals plant and sold titanium dioxide pigment for coatings and other end-use applications. Titanium dioxide is a raw material widely used in the paint and coatings industry as pigment for its hiding, durability and whiteness characteristics. Source: Argex Titanium, 27 June Dow supply to customers in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. The Dow Chemical Company is pleased to announce the mechanical completion of the first acrylic monomer production facility in the Middle East. The Saudi Acrylic Monomer Company (SAMCo) joint venture plant in Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia, provides the company with advantaged feedstocks to fuel Dow’s production of acrylic emulsion polymers for applications such as coatings and adhesives. The plant will also allow more reliable and efficient Dow acquired a joint venture stake in SAMCo with Tasnee Sahara Olefins Company in 2009. The new plant will produce Glacial Acrylic Acid (GAA) and Butyl Acrylate (BA) to fuel regional, global and captive demand. Tasnee will market the products in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Dow will market them throughout the rest of the world. Pre-marketing activities have been underway for several months and SAMCo looks forward to commencing commercial shipments in the next quarter. 2 “The SAMCo plant was designed to incorporate Dow’s best technologies to help ensure safe and efficient operations to allow us to improve reliable supply to customers around the world as well as our own downstream businesses,” said Pat Gottschalk, Business President for Dow’s monomers, resins and intermediates businesses. The SAMCo plant was completed with an outstanding construction safety record and the project was recognised by Project Finance magazine as the Middle East petrochemical project of the year in 2012. Source: Dow, 27 June Drytac/Advanced Finishing Technologies Drytac®, an international manufacturer of adhesive-coated products and graphics finishing equipment and supplies, has signed a formal agreement with Advanced Finishing Technologies/Digital2You to sell its UV liquid coating division, including UV coaters and UV liquid coatings. The sale is a direct result of a recent corporate review during which Drytac® decided to shift its business strategy. Going forward, Drytac® will focus on its expanded line of standard and custom adhesivecoated products. Jim Tatum, who previously managed Drytac®’s UV liquid coating division, will now champion the product line at Advanced Finishing Technologies. Advanced Finishing Technologies will continue to offer the same UV product lines with the same product names through various sales channels and the Digital2You dealer network. “Jim’s knowledge of the UV liquids market is vast, and his familiarity with our UV liquid customers should ensure a smooth transition for both companies,” states Marc Oosterhuis, Drytac® President. Jim Tatum adds, “This is a product line that I helped develop from the ground up so I consider this a great opportunity to advance liquid coating technologies. It’s both an honour and a challenge, but I look forward to continued success with the UV liquids line.” It is important to note that Drytac® will retain its aqueous (water-based) liquid coating division, which offers both aqueous liquid coaters and liquid coatings to customers in the graphics finishing market. In addition, the company plans to introduce a new aqueous giclee coater and several liquid coatings during the SGIA Expo in Orlando, Florida, held October 2325, 2013. Source: Drytec, 1 July 3 Brenntag Brenntag, the global market leader in chemical distribution, has further expanded its application laboratory facilities with the construction of a new Innovation & Training Centre in Thailand. The new facility is situated within the premises of the Warehouse and Logistics Centre in Bangkok offering two training rooms and six technical application laboratories. The labs are designed to support Brenntag’s Specialties business for Personal Care, Food & Beverage, Agro, Cleaning, Textile and Coatings (ACES). For customers, Brenntag adds value by developing new product formulations for and together with customers using the broad range of speciality ingredients in its product portfolio. Customers appreciate that Brenntag can speed up the process for new product launches by having access to an application lab and technical staff in close proximity to their markets. Through the new Innovation & Training Centre, Brenntag Thailand is also able to offer more value-added services to suppliers. In partnership with suppliers, Brenntag arranges customer seminars which are targeting individual customer needs. Suppliers also have the opportunity to conduct training sessions at the Centre with the assistance of experienced and competent specialists of Brenntag. Source: Brenntag, 28 June ShawCor ShawCor Ltd. has announced that its pipe coating division, Bredero Shaw, has received a contract with a value of approximately US$30 million from Statoil Norway to provide pipeline coatings for the Edvard Grieg Oil Pipeline project and the Utsira High Gas Pipeline project. These pipelines will transport oil and gas from the Edvard Grieg and Ivar Aasen fields. The gas will be transported to St. Fergus through a tie in of the Utsira High Gas Pipeline to the Sage system and the oil will be transported to Sture, Norway, through a tie in of the Edvard Grieg Oil Pipeline to the existing Grane Oil Pipeline. The Edvard Grieg field (formerly Luno) is located in the Utsira High area of the Norwegian North Sea. The contract will be executed at the Bredero Shaw pipe coating facility in Leith, Scotland. 4 This contract involves coating approximately 98 km of 16" pipe and 46 km of 29" pipe with 3-layer polypropylene anticorrosion coating, internal flow efficiency coating and concrete weight coating. Coating will commence during the fourth quarter of 2013. ShawCor Ltd is an energy services company specialising in products and services for the pipeline and pipe services and the petrochemical and industrial segments of the oil and gas industry. The company operates through eight divisions with over seventy-five manufacturing and service facilities located around the world. Source: ShawCor, 28 June Trust Chem Europe introduction of our DiAzoCondensation Yellow range and with the successes of our other High Performance Pigments a further increase will be needed.” commented Henk Loonstra, Technical Director Trust Chem Europe. Trust Chem Europe BV, the European division of Trust Chem Co. Ltd, has announced that effective 28th June 2013, as part of its continued growth, its European headquarters in Deventer (the Netherlands) is moving to a new office location. “We expect that with the recent “As we build upon our expansion into Europe we are continuously looking for new and value-added ways to do business. After doubling the square metres of our European warehouses in 2012 we now are doubling office space. With more office space, and a state-ofthe-art infrastructure, logistics and warehouses, we will be able to provide even better services to our distributors and customers,” said Robert Paul Wielinga, Marketing & Sales Director, Trust Chem Europe. Source: Trust Chem Europe, 27 June 5 Bordeaux/FTC Bordeaux Digital Printink, a leading innovator of a wide range of inks and coatings for a variety of demanding inkjet applications, printing technologies and techniques, has announced that FTC (UK) has joined its reseller network. FTC (UK), a leading manufacturer of finishing products for the Visual Communications Market, will distribute Bordeaux’s coating and liquid laminates throughout the United Kingdom. FTC will showcase Bordeaux’s coatings at the FESPA 2013 conference, 25th-29th June 2013, in London, UK at the Excel London Exhibition Centre, stand G75S. Live demonstrations will include coatings with Bordeaux’s CLEAR WIDE™ UV coating series for high volume wide format applications. Bordeaux also offers a wide variety of environmentally friendly water-based coatings, latexbased inks, dye-sublimation, UV and UV LED curable inks and bulk ink delivery solutions. The company’s wide range of inks and liquids for inkjets is available in the UK through UK Euroconnect and Stehlin Hostag. Source: Bordeaux Digital Printink, 24 June Available now from IRL... A PROFILE OF THE MEXICAN PAINT INDUSTRY 1ST EDITION IRL is pleased to announce the publication of a brand new publication A Profile of the Mexican Paint Industry. For the first time ever, IRL examines Mexico’s paints and coatings market independently and not as part of a regional study on the Central American paint market, thereby enabling to present more in-depth paint market data and trends. This first edition provides market data for 2011, anticipated figures for 2012, and forecasts to 2016. Mexico’s paints and coatings sector was enjoying a period of rapid expansion until the outbreak of the world financial crisis which, accompanied by an increase in raw material prices, caused the sector to tumble. With NAFTA free-trade agreements in place, Mexico succeeded at increasing trade competitiveness with the USA, bringing the paints and coatings market into full recovery in 2010. Last year Mexico outperformed Brazil in terms of GDP growth (Mexico: 3.9%; Brazil: 2.7%) benefitting the development of the paints and coatings sector, causing it to further expand and reach an estimated demand of 820,400 tonnes. Although the elections taking place on 1 July 2012 have caused the economy to slow-down, this trend has quickly reversed and consumer behaviour and investments have risen once again. 6 Decorative paints is by far the largest market segment, accounting for almost 70% of the total paints and coatings market share but is subject to seasonal demand. Together with Mexico’s increased purchasing power, credit lending has allowed for refurbishment works to drive the construction sector. While many are identifying the development of a second seasonality peak, it is the smaller industrial coatings sector that is foreseen to undergo faster growth rates on average in the next few years -with AAGR of 3.1 % up until 2016 in the decorative segment as opposed to a 3.7 % growth expected on the industrial coatings segment. By the end of the year 2016, the market could reach a demand of 965,000 tonnes. Mexican Paint Market, 2011 - 2016 800,000 600,000 400,000 2011 2016 200,000 0 The booming of the automotive industry will be the key driver to fuel Mexico’s industrial coatings growth and will also promote the use of automotive refinishes on the long term. Indeed, the automotive OEM coatings sector is expected to experience growth rates well above Mexico’s expected GDP progress, with the possibility of attaining a 5.2% year-on-year growth rate. Otherwise, new investments into Mexico’s state-run Pemex, which largely dominates the country’s oil and gas sectors, will be the main factor to trigger expansion in most other industrial coatings sectors including the marine, protective and general industrial coatings sectors. 7 On the technological side, a number of reformulations to improve the eco-friendliness of paints have strengthened the existing, but relatively recent, trend towards substitution of solventborne with waterborne coatings. A much stronger use of powder coatings has also been reported. However, despite environmental awareness increasing slowly, there is otherwise not much legislative incentive to promote a faster switch-over towards environmentally-friendlier products. A challenge to be addressed within the paints and coatings sector is that much of the industry still relies on outdated equipment and technologies. In addition, the market remains largely dominated by the giant paint maker Comex. Nonetheless, the outlook for the paints and coatings market sector in Mexico appears highly promising. The country’s per capita paint consumption stands at 7.1 kg/head, a figure considerably lower to that of Brazil, placed at 8.4 kg/head. This indicates much potential for growth in a country that over the past decades has continuously leapfrogged Brazil as Latin’s America top economy. ‘A Profile of the Mexican Paint Industry’, 1st Edition, gives an insight into the market changes in the past few years as well as the current market status of the paint industry. The report outlines the key trends affecting nine mainstream paints and coatings segments. The paints and coatings segments covered are: decorative, industrial wood, protective, marine, automotive OEM, automotive refinishes, powder, general industrial and plastic coatings. Forecasts on these are presented to the year 2016, including the release of anticipated market figures for the end of the year 2012. For more information on this report, please contact Cathy Galbraith: cgalbraith@brggroup.com or call +44 208 832 7830. Coating Update by Email (CUBE) is a free weekly news digest of the latest business news and events in the global paints and coatings industry, and is published in-house by specialist coatings research company IRL. Subscriptions: If you or your colleagues would like to subscribe to CUBE, please send an email along with your name, position and company to cube@brggroup.com with ‘SUBSCRIBE’ written in the subject field. Please add news@brggroup-chems.com to your safe senders list. If you no longer wish to receive CUBE, please send a blank email to cube@brggroup.com with ‘UNSUBSCRIBE’ written in the subject field. Enquiries: For enquiries or feedback to the Editor of CUBE (Mrs. Yana Charushkina), please send an email to cube@brggroup.com. Please also send your press releases to this address. 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