www.paintshow.com.br
16
Março 2010
PAINT & PINTURA
tinct periods. It began under the strong impact of the
world financial crisis, which led to major inventory
adjustments across the value chain, followed by the
resulting fall in demand. “Then, in around July and
August, we experienced a significant pick-up in de-
mand and had supply difficulties because we couldn’t
keep pace with the rapid market growth in Brazil and
also had trouble getting raw materials, especially
imported ones,” reports Reginaldo Cassiano, regional
manager, sales and marketing, BASF Dispersions for
Adhesives and Construction.
As they did in all other businesses in Brazil, volumes
and prices dropped in early 2009 on account of the in-
ternational crisis. Early 2009 margins were compromi-
sed by expensive inventories combined with fall in sales.
Then, the resumption of a regular business level for a
few months, combined with the need for inventory re-
plenishment, brought about a situation that is hard to
handle and persists until the present day. The limited
supply of key raw materials goes on and, to top it off,
external factors suggest that the difficulty supplying
the market will extend for the next few months.
Overall, we can say that the market in acrylic resins
has followed the paint market as a whole in behavior.
Despite the tough time in the first half, due to the
effects of the economic crisis, the second half came
along with a significant upturn, especially due to
the growth in building and construction, which is a
major consumer of resins pushed the demand back to
the outstanding 2008 levels.
For 2010, growth expectations are as positive as can
be. The pick-up in business, the increase in mass con-
sumption, the federal government’s Economic Growth
Acceleration Program, and the opportunities created
by the infrastructure works required for the country
to host the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games
make us confident that the demand for acrylic resins
will keep on growing all through the year. “We believe
that there will be more and more opportunities for
performance-enhancing products that add value to
our partners in 2010 and over the next few years.
Brazil is changing, and we definitely want to contri-
bute to that change,” says BASF’s Cassiano.
Production Equipment - Mills, dispensers and
mixers: trend towards automation
The production equipment market, particularly mills,
dispensers and mixers, followed the same trends as
industrial investments in general, which are sensitive
to difficulties like those arising out of the crisis in the
US, with strong fluctuations between the two halves
of 2009. But the turbulence is gone, and the country’s
key economic variables show that growth is back at
the natural pace.
In last year’s preoccupying context, companies
sought to provide customers for more creative and
innovative solutions, which in the equipment indus-
try means machines featuring greater productivity,
high quality, high precision, and dependability, at
low prices and maintenance costs, while meeting the
industry’s need to rationalize its production and in-
crease the profitability of their production processes
in order to achieve sustainable growth.
Even though 2009 began with an array of compli-
cations, a significant recovery came along with the
second half, and the year ended with positive results
and optimistic projections for 2010.
“For Moinho Pirâmide, 2009 was a satisfactory year
since, if we look at the extent to which the crisis
affected our industry, we’ll see that we’ve overcome
all of its stages. The early effects of the crises gave
rise to horrifying expectations, making our market
too insecure to make any investment decisions, and
business community waited in the middle of the road
for things to calm down. However, our sales depart-
ment anticipated the difficulties it was going to
encounter in the maze that was the crisis, came up
with a strategic plan called “side effect”, consisting of
investing out time and equipment inventory becau-
se, as we monitored the government’s decisions, we
realized that the demand for equipment would grow
around 80 percent over last year due to the release
of credit facilities at irresistible interest rates, and,
come December, our inventory was 100-percent sold,
as anticipated by our sales team. With such a success
in 2009 for our company, we increased our person-
nel by 30 percent. Now, the expectations for 2010 as
positive as possible,” says Junior Machado, technical
director at Moinho Pirâmide.
Another factor showing growth is that demand for
those products has increased over the past few years,
and it appears that the increase is likely to conti-
nue in the years to come. Each year more companies
realize and acknowledge the importance of auto-
mation, in that it enables them to improve product
quality, maximize results, use raw materials more