Growth drivers of Paint Industry

1. Increasing level of income and education: The increasing proportion of young population along with increasing disposable incomes is leading to a change in consumer habits. The Indian economy is shifting from a savings economy to a spending economy. With more income at their disposal, people are now ready to pay for better products and paint is no exception.

Educated consumers are more brand conscious and seek value in what they consume. Thus, paint companies offering value-added features like non-toxicity, weather protection, texture, eco-friendly production, etc. will attract more demand. These value-added products enable the manufacturers to earn a better premium as compared to the regular paints, thus offering higher margins.

2. Increasing Urbanization: Urbanization is leading to a shift from temporary houses to permanent houses. Urban houses are well-designed in its interior as well as exterior aspect. This calls for more houses being painted using medium and premium paints. For urban houses, interior design is becoming a fashion statement and a lot of paint is used to decorate the interiors. This will lead to an increase in the per capita consumption of paint which will increase the overall demand of paint. Urbanization also brings more nuclear families. More nuclear families mean more number of houses even for the existing population thus further driving the demand.

3. Increasing share of organized sector: Decrease in taxes on key raw materials will improve the position of the organized players. The Organized sector is expanding its distribution network and adopting the installation of tinting machines at retail outlets. These tinting machines offer a wide variety of colour shade options to choose from. The unorganized players are not in a position to offer such facility as it is comparatively capital intensive. Shift in use, from distemper segment towards premier segment is also shifting market share from the unorganized sector to the organized sector.

4. Development of the Realty, Automobile and Infrastructure sector: The growth of the paint industry is largely dependent on the development of the realty and housing sector, as decorative segment generates about 70% of the total paint demand from this sector.  The Automobile segment generates more than two-third of the demand for Industrial paints, and hence is the growth driver for Industrial Paints. The Infrastructure segment creates direct demand for paints as well as creates indirect demand through supporting the growth of the realty, automobile, FMCG and other industries where paint is used.

The growth potential in the above 3 sectors is immense, the paint industry being dependent on these 3 sectors is expected to grow along with them.

5. Availability of financing options: Easier housing finance and auto finance is expected to favour more people to buy houses and travel in personal vehicles. This will drive the growth of housing and automobile sector, of which the Paint industry will get its share.

6. Increasing Penetration in the Rural Markets: Paint usage in rural areas is generally in the distemper segment, hence dominated by the unorganized players. Demand in rural areas is dependent on agriculture, which is dependent on the monsoons. With the development of irrigation facility, the dependence of agricultural output on monsoons will be on a decreasing trend. Also, with the modernization of agriculture and accompanying development of rural India, consumer preferences are expected to improve. Paint companies are expanding their distribution network in rural parts of India, which is a relatively untapped market for the organized players. These factors supported by the increasing penetration of the paint companies will help drive the demand for paints.

By : Reema Kapoor

ICIS, NOIDA

 

The Powder Coating Technology

The Powder Coating Technology

What is Powder Coating?

Powder coating is a finishing technology where a decorative and highly protective coating can be applied to a wide range of products. The process involves spraying finely ground, electro-statically charged particles of pigment and resin onto a surface to be coated. The charged powder particles adhere to the electrically grounded surfaces and then are heated and fused into a smooth coating in a curing oven.

 

Fig. 1.1: Spray gun for powder coating.

What does Powder Coating Offer?

·                 Superior Appearance

·                 Mechanical Resistance Properties

·                 Corrosion Resistance

·                 Solvent Resistance

·                 Highly durable: chip, scratch, fade and wear resistant

·                 Ready to use and require no mixing, solvent or catalysts

Liquid Finishes vs. Powder Coating

·               Solvents Necessitate venting, filtering, and solvent recovery systems that is not necessary in powder coating.

·               Liquid Spray Coating achieve material usage of 20-85% while powder coating has a Material usage of 95-98%

·               Liquid overspray is lost in filters while 99% of Powder overspray is collected and reused

Fig. 1.2: The powder coating lab.

Powder Types

·                Thermoplastic: 

o           Powder melts and flows to form a film.

o           Continues to have the same chemical composition when it solidifies

o           Will re-melt when heated.

o           Thick coating surface and not in same market as liquid paint.

o           Examples 

Ø    Polyethylene

Ø    Polypropylene

Ø    PVC

·               Thermoses:

o      Powder melt flow and cross-link chemically to products

o      Cured coatings have different chemical structures than the basic resigns. 

o      Will not re-melt when reheated

o      Can produce thin paint like coating of 0.001 – 0.003 inch thick.

o      Examples

Ø   Epoxy

Ø   Hydroxyl polyester (urethane)

Ø   Acrylic Urethane

Process

Fig. 1.3: The powder coating gun.

Fig. 1.4: Stages of powder coating.

By : Anshul Gupta

Revolution in cheminformatics

 Cheminformatics is a relatively new field of information technology that focuses on the collection, storage, analysis, and manipulation of chemical data. Cheminformatics involves the use of computer technologies to process chemical data. The chemical data of interest typically includes information on small molecule formulas, structures, properties, spectra, and activities (biological or industrial).

 Cheminformatics originally emerged as a vehicle to help the drug discovery and development process, however cheminformatics now plays an increasingly important role in many areas of biology, chemistry, and biochemistry. The intent of this unit is to give readers some introduction into the field of cheminformatics and to show how cheminformatics not only shares many similarities with the field of bioinformatics, but that it can also enhance much of what is currently done in bioinformatics.

Cheminformatics is a tool that aims at facilitating the decision-making process across various preclinical stages of drug discovery. Access to biological and chemical data, but not the data themselves, is an integral part of cheminformatics. Emerging tools that allow storage of, and access to, chemical, structural-chemical and biological information are only now beginning to reach maturity. Recent advances in cheminformatics include virtual library analysis without enumeration and novel methods to investigate global chemical similarity and diversity voids.

 The most important task for cheminformatics is to constantly reevaluate itself and its utility in the area of drug discovery, in order to provide probabilistic, rather than categorical predictions Cheminformatics can help by enabling fast, cheap virtual experiments to prioritize real experiments. As more drug discovery research is carried out in academia, institutes and small companies, and solutions will require pieces from cheminformatics, bioinformatics and other disciplines, cheminformatics knowledge and tools should be made as widely available as possible.

Again, global warming and preserving the environment will be one of the biggest challenges for mankind this century. Fundamental to this will be finding chemicals which are less polluting or less toxic to the environment, or improving chemical use to minimize environmental impact (e.g. in petrochemicals). Cheminformatics already has much to offer through computational toxicology and predictive modeling.

Chemicals are being found to be increasingly important in cellular functions, for example through small molecule modulators and epigenetics. This has led to fields such as chemical biology, and more recently systems chemistry  and systems chemical biology , which seek to understand biological systems from a chemistry perspective. Integration of cheminformatics and bioinformatics methods will be key to this.

By : Technical Team

ICIS, NOIDA