Opportunities and challenges facing coatings companies today

Relying on the rapid rise of the real estate industry, the coatings industry is an undoubted rising industry in the past two decades. With the progress of the times, there are more and more industries closely related to coatings, such as home building materials, automobiles, ships, and toys. At present, domestic high-speed rail and real estate are also under constant construction, and there will be huge development space for coatings companies. "It is expected that by 2020, the construction of high-speed railways of 200 kilometers per hour and above in China will exceed 18,000 kilometers." The construction of high-speed railway will definitely stimulate the demand for waterproof coatings, especially high-performance polyurethane waterproof coatings, and will greatly accelerate the development of our waterproof coatings market. Home decoration is a rigid demand. Whether it is a commercial house or an apartment, an existing house or an off-the-plan house, advertisements with fine decoration have been advertised to attract customers. The economic effects of high-speed rail are brought into play. The infrastructure construction of oil and gas pipelines, cross-border bridges, power transmission lines, and optical fiber transmission systems lays the material foundation for the “Belt and Road”. New historical opportunities brought by the development of the coatings industry.

Therefore, coatings companies may use their strengths in the coatings market such as engineering paints, home improvement paints, waterproofing, flooring, railroad car paints, and parts paints. In the billions of coatings market, coatings companies have great potential. Take the Shanghai high-speed railway as an example, which has a total length of 1,318 kilometers and a total waterproof project of 2 billion.

However, things are slightly different with regard to architectural coatings. Architectural coatings are too dependent on real estate; the closer they are, the more dangerous the situation becomes. Interior and exterior wall coatings used for decoration account for about 36% of total coating production. In addition to floor coatings, waterproof coatings, decorative coatings, etc., architectural coatings account for about 45.6% of total coating production. If real estate is in crisis, architectural coatings will be the first to bear the brunt.

At present, environmental protection has also risen to unprecedented heights. Air pollution and water pollution are urgent problems to be solved. Environmental protection regulations introduced in various places have a certain degree of impact on various industries, especially the chemical and furniture industries. Therefore, it is difficult to say whether many coating companies with high energy consumption and high pollution can stand firm under the dual pressure of consumption tax and Environmental Protection Law. The spring of the coatings industry seems to have passed. It is indeed time for the large and small coating enterprises to reorder and reshuffle. The coating enterprises need to consider how to transform and upgrade. Enterprises face more difficulties in transforming and upgrading. Funds, technology, and talents are all indispensable. In order to survive, price increases are the last choice. But consumers are willing to pay for products with high pollution, low environmental protection, and harmful to health. The market has the final say.

All in all, opportunities and challenges coexist in any period. The future development of the industry will also continue to move in the direction of standardization, scale, green environmental protection, capital saving and energy saving, safety and humanization, and high technology.