Outlook Mixed for Latin America Market & Industrial Coatings Market

According to figures from Chemark Consulting Group, industrial coatings comprised approximately 35 percent of total coatings consumption globally. The market for industrial coatings is a highly segmented market that includes such diverse segments as offshore oil and gas, commercial architecture, general industrial and industrial maintenance. Industrial coatings manufacturers interviewed by Coatings World reported that while growth rates have slowed in some segments, others such as oil and gas, are driving growth.

In “Industrial Coatings Market”, we interview a number of major industrial coatings manufacturers. Executives from Axalta, Hempel, PPG, and Sherwin-Williams offer their insight into this diverse and complex market.

“Each application segment presents unique growth opportunities,” said Shelley J. Bausch, vice president, Global Industrial Coatings, PPG. “Globally, expansions in oil and gas and transportation of these commodities provide multiple coatings opportunities.  Trends in electronic materials and their use beyond computers and mobile phones to automobiles, commercial buildings, and homes provides a diverse growth opportunity for coatings.  And as a macro trend, the continued expansion of the transportation market – personal and commercial vehicles – gives a robust opportunity for growth.  This is particularly apparent in developing regions.”

Michael Cash, senior vice president and president, industrial coatings, Axalta Coating estimated based on aggregated third party data that the global industrial coatings end markets grew by three to four percent in 2014. “By working closely with our customers, and by welcoming many new customers to the Axalta family in 2014, we were able to grow faster than the overall size of a number of our end use markets last year.”

Our correspondent Charles Thurston offers his analysis on the state of the Latin America Coatings Market  in his report “Latin America Paint Outlook Mixed, But Growing”.

Thurston reports that the estimated $10 billion demand in Latin America for paints and coatings is mixed this year, as the economies in some of the largest countries – including Brazil and Colombia – slow down, while others like Mexico, Peru and the Caribbean accelerate modestly.

According to Thurston, overall, a regional expansion of 0.9 percent is estimated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this year, while the forecast for 2016 is 2.0 percent. This makes for difficult investment plans and more costly importation of raw and finished materials, although some paint markets in some countries are still growing at a few percentage points above gross domestic product (GDP), a tendency during growth years.