Revista Paint & Pintura - Edição 234

CLIPPING 6 | PAINT&PINTURA | Julho 2018 INDUSTRY KEEPS DEVELOPMENTS ON TRACK, STAYS OPTIMISTIC This month’s issue of Paint & Pintura Magazine brings to you important news on some of the key raw materials used in the formulationof paints and coatings, such as our reporting onmineral additives and on coalescing agents, which includesmarket-leading suppliers and distributors. The mineral additives market, for example, has evolved significantly and experienced major changes in the past couple of decades. Mineral fillers have ceased to be just a minor ingredient and started to play a more marked role in paint and coating formulations. Currently, mineral additives boast a number of distinguishing features, such as finer particle sizes, a high degree of purity, surface treatment, and the ability to act as titanium dioxide ex- tenders—in other words, they impart various functional properties to paints and coatings. When it comes to growth, this industry, likemost others, is facing a few challenges, especially due to the situation with Brazil’s economy, which was crippled a truckers’ strike, and has been deteriorating by the week since. By the end of the month of June, the country’s GDP (gross domestic product) growth forecast for 2018 had fallen to 1.55 percent, down from the rate of 2.37 percent that was expected just a month earlier. Notwithstanding those forecasts, suppliers of mineral additives remain optimistic and full of strategies to over- come this predicament, as they reinvent themselves, innovate, and usher in technologies that effectively meet customer re- quirements, especially by delivering good cost-benefit ratios and more sustainable solutions. Coalescing agents, too, continue to evolve, especially as pro- ducts are developed to combine performance with low VOC levels, providing more value for money to better cope with today’s troubled economy. Yet in spite of the poor economic indicators, suppliers seem optimistic, having even seen an uptick in the demand for these raw materials. Also featured in this magazine is an article on metal contai- ners, which make up a market that is still on the rise and in the spotlight in the paint and coatings industry, especially because they are safe, high-quality products made of a fully sustainable material. Last but not least in this issue, we have also put together for you a piece on the history, importance and evolution of thema- rket in tinting systems for automotive refinish applications. In it, telling you how it all came to be, includingwhat the process of achieving that milestone in the Brazilian coatings industry was like, are three reputable professionals of the industrywho took part in that process and lived it in all its intensity - Luiz Martinho, owner of LAPMConsulting, and Francisco Rácz and Washington Yamaga, partners at Rácz, Yamaga & Associates. Check it all out on the coming pages. MINERAL ADDITIVES - INCREASINGLY FUNCTIONAL There have been consistent technology improvements in mineral fillers, not only in terms of performance and cost-benefit ratios, but also because they provide func- tional properties and particles similar to those titanium dioxide products. The Brazilian market in mineral additives for the paint and coatings industry has experienced a rather significant development over the past 25 years. One needs to go that far back in time in one’s analysis because it was not until the very early 1990’s that Brazil’s economy, which had been completely shut off from the worldmarket, was opened up by the “Collor administration”, allowing mineral additives, as well as other paint ingredients, to be imported on a larger scale. “Also starting in that decade, major international players in themineral additive business began setting up operations in Brazil. Many mergers and acquisitions have taken place in the last several years, especially involving smaller, predominantly family-run businesses. In recent years, thismovement towards consolidation has been an ongoing process that is sure to have impacts on the paint and coatings industry. On the other hand, the number of small mineral additive suppliers to the industry is still very much on the large side. Many of them do business as resellers or importers or otherwise don’t have their own

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