Sustainability in coatings is no longer defined by a single metric—it is shaped by formulation choices, performance expectations, and lifecycle responsibility. In this Q&A, Wayne Daniell, director at The ChemQuest Group, shares his perspective on how formulation innovation is driving meaningful progress across the value chain. He also explores the evolving balance between sustainability and performance, and the challenges of translating innovation from the lab to commercial reality.
Q: What role will formulation innovation play in advancing sustainability?
The formulation stage is key to achieving our sustainability goals. An old mentor of mine compared formulating to cooking. He would say that it’s not just about using the finest ingredients, but how you blend them together. Understanding how one ingredient influences and brings out the best in the next—and how they combine to define the consistency and taste of the final dish. I absolutely share that view.
Formulators know that if you change one component, it can affect the whole formulation: its stability, possible component aggregation, solids settling rate, pH range, viscosity, shear resistance, and film drying time. Getting the formulation right determines in-can behavior and therefore shelf life, as well as influencing coating application (e.g., spraying). New raw materials (like biomaterials) must be properly integrated to enable efficient manufacturing and effective industrial-scale application.
Significant R&D work is focused precisely on this topic. For example, clients who come to us looking for support with their formulation development are exploring the use of new or alternate raw materials, transitioning to water-based systems or reducing VOC (volatile organic compound) levels, and evaluating new formulations on numerous application processes to become more efficient and less energy intensive.
Q: Historically, sustainability and performance have often been seen as trade-offs. Do you believe that tension is narrowing, and why?
Yes, absolutely. Firstly, we’ve seen a change of mindset within the industry. This is not just a growing awareness but an actual acceptance that change is inevitable, and that thinking and acting sustainably is the only way forward. And secondly, innovation is advancing. Given the right motivation and encouragement, I believe we as an industry are capable of achieving great things.
The introduction of any new material (e.g., from sources independent of fossil fuels) is always accompanied by initial teething problems. It’s the nature of the game. But those problems can be overcome through innovation cycles. We gain a greater understanding of the new raw materials, their properties and behavior, and how best to integrate them into formulations that meet, or even exceed, the performance of current state-of-the-art coatings.
Recent innovations have already demonstrated a closing of the gap. The use of reactive polymer-bound surfactants has led to the development of durable, water-based latex coatings for exterior use. In Europe, Worlée is pioneering the use of sustainably made camelina oil in the manufacture of high-performance binders and additives. And Evonik has recently introduced a range of 100% plant-based biosurfactants (made via the fermentation of sugar) that exhibit enhanced wetting and color retention properties in waterborne coatings.
Q: How important is lifecycle thinking, including durability, maintenance cycles, and end-of-life considerations, when determining whether a coating is truly sustainable?
In the past, there was a tendency within our industry (when supplying to OEMs) to consider the sale of a coated end product as a convenient boundary for where our responsibility ended. Ease of application, appearance, performance, and a certain lifetime would encourage the OEM to buy more coating. But there was little consideration for what came after that.
Now, however, we are entering a period of increased accountability. And if we as chemists create a complex material (and a coating is certainly a multi-component complex system), then we are responsible for its makeup, its behavior, and the environmental impact throughout its lifetime. This begins with the sourcing of raw materials, continues through the energy usage and pollution evaluations of manufacturing and application, and now extends to beyond the lifetime of the coated end product. As more and more end products are evaluated for their potential to be reused, recycled, or even composted, we as an industry need to extend our considerations to that end-of-product-life moment.
This will pose one of our greatest challenges. For example, how do we get a protective coating that has been designed to weather the harshest environmental conditions to stop protecting, on demand, and break down into recyclable or biodegradable components?
Q: What are the biggest challenges in scaling sustainable coating technologies from the lab to full commercial production?
The old adage says that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the supply chain required to support commercialization of a sustainable coating is not exempt from this. Furthermore, for the product to be truly sustainable, each step of the process needs to be in itself sustainable.
It begins with raw materials sourcing and the aim to reduce dependency upon materials derived from fossil fuels. Can renewable biomaterials be used? Are they realistically available in sufficient industrial quantity? Can they be used in existing formulations, or does the incorporation require use of surfactants or additives or stabilizers—and are these from sustainable manufacture in themselves?
Now consider the energy requirements of formulation and large-scale production. Might any viscosity, dispersion, or stability issues drive energy consumption up? Or is there a need to manage heat transfer, either to maintain temperature to keep things flowing or remove it from an exothermic step in the process?
Are any byproducts or pollutants created in the process, surpassing explosion safety limits or allowed waste gas levels. Alas, the same rules apply for sustainable coatings as to scaling any production.
Q: How can collaboration across the value chain—raw material suppliers, formulators, applicators, and end users—accelerate progress toward shared sustainability goals?
Let’s look at three coatings: an interior, decorative house paint sold in Scandinavia; a metallic-effect, high-gloss automotive coating; and a high-performance durable protective coating on an oil rig in the North Atlantic Ocean. Our industry serves all three scenarios, but each one has a specific set of performance, application, pricing, and environmental requirements and targets. The willingness to become more sustainable might be there, but in each case the path to reaching those sustainability goals is going to be different. Those individual pain points, restrictions, and limitations need to be shared throughout the supply chain for us to truly make progress. It needs communication. And then it needs collaboration.
We are looking at a paradigm change in our industry, with innovation taking place all along the supply chain. We are seeing the introduction of new raw materials, the creation of new formulations, the introduction of more efficient production processes and easier application processes with less energy requirements and lower emissions, and the goal of non-harmful coatings that can either degrade or be recycled when a product reaches end-of-life.
It’s a big task and only possible with close collaboration. One part of the chain directly influences the next. If we acknowledge and respect that, we will become increasingly effective.
Wayne Daniell, Ph.D., joined The ChemQuest Group in 2023. Over his extensive career, Daniell has founded and managed companies that developed nanomaterials and various coatings additives for use in markets such as consumer electronics, renewable energy, and white biotechnology. Daniell holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Reading, as well as a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Nottingham. A UK native currently based in Germany, Daniell speaks English and German.