Asia Pacifc Coatings Region – Poised for Continued Growth through 2024

By George R. Pilcher

Korea and Australia, value generally outpaces volume, which should not be a surprise, given their status as developed countries. Between the years 2013-2018, paints and coatings revenues for APAC grew from $56.i billion to $74.2 billion representing 18.5 billion liters and 23.7 billion liters, respectively (Figures 1 and 2).

Talk with practically anyone in the U.S. manufacturing industry about APAC, and the conversation will almost certainly devolve into a discussion about China, and the person to whom you are speaking is very likely to express some­thing other than indifference or cool detachment about “China.” The subject of China tends to bring forth dynamic, often emotion-laden responses, in which it is seen as either a friend or foe, or-especially among the larger, more globalized corporations-as either a colleague or a competitor. For example, General Motor’s CEO Mary Barra cor­rectly sees China as an exciting country in which to be producing cars and doing business-GM’s 27 plants, built to serve the Chinese market in the People’s Republic, produce and sell more cars than its 29 U.S. plants, and the profits that they generate come from Chinese sales and are used to run the Chinese plants. U.S.- profits are not involved in GM’s Chinese business, nor have any U.S. plants been “moved to China.”

Although 30,000 Buick Envisions were built in China and sold in the United States in 2018, this is such a small num­ber (roughly 1% of GM’s total sales in the United States) that its impact on GM’s manufacturing business in the United States is negligible.1 On the other hand, a U.S. firm manufacturing and selling tex­tiles, plastics or paper products sees not so much an opportunity for expanding production into an indigenous Chinese market, as GM has, but rather a type of terrestrial “black hole” sucking business out of the United States and into China, with only minimal hope of ever reclaim­ing the lost production. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too is the judgment of “goodness” or “badness” of Chinese manufacturing activity.