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been taken in the marketplace, especially in promo-
tional terms, and began to draw attention to those
effects. Now, for example, you can find thermochro-
mic pigments in printing inks, industrial coatings,
plastics, school supplies, leather goods, textiles and
many other applications,” he reports.
The market in specialty pigments and effect pig-
ments has great potential for growth, depending
directly on pigment costs, and since these materials
have become more competitive, many doors have
been opened. “Photochromic pigments have also
been used in new market segments, and we believe
that will be noticed very clearly over the next few
months. Luminescent pigments, which have always
been limited to printing inks for safety applications,
are now at a new stage and are about to make
an entrance in the market, especially in printing
ink applications. The demand has been increasing
recently for phosphorescent pigments, especially
for coatings for plastics and leather, and we believe
that surprising developments will take place in this
market over months to come,” says Heise.
The effect pigment market, comprising pearlescent
(traditional, interference and diffractive) and alu-
minum pigments, is now quite mature and subs-
tantial in size. The growth in this market is tied to
that of the automotive industry, as well as manu-
facturers of inks, cosmetics and plastic packaging
materials, which means that it is directly linked
with the level of business activity in the economy.
“Since Brazil’s economy is on the rise, we’ve seem a
certain shortage of those products in the course of
2010, and this situation tends to continue up until
the end of the year. We expect the effect pigment
industry to grain around 10 percent for 2010,”
Forscher’s Heise points out.
Monomers - Sustainable technologies
Monomer producers seek to develop new molecules,
specialties and materials from renewable sources
in order to improve costs, performance and, above
all, reduce the environmental footprint of the entire
value chain.
In the monomer market, innovation has been
focused on the development of environmentally
friendlier products. Accordingly, manufacturers of
monomers have been developing products and tech-