Resin Technologies for Industrial Maintenance Coatings Performance and Sustainability Drive Development

By Cynthia Challener

The market for industrial maintenance coatings varies from segment to seg­ment and region to region, but overall appears to be growing. “We have seen a rebound in the industrial coating market from a rather sluggish 2016,” says Ahren Olson, marketing manager for Protective Coatings at Covestro. He points in par­ticular to the oil and gas segment, which has seen a slight rebound from very poor years in 2015 and 2016. He notes that operators have found ways to reduce pro­duction cost, which has spurred renewed activity in drilling, and drill counts in North America are up drastically versus 2016.

In the infrastructure segment in the United States, on the other hand, there is uncertainty, according to Olson. “The bridge and highway segment remains desperately underfunded by the federal government, and everyone continues to wait for new legislation arid funding,” he says. When you examine the market more closely from a technology perspective, different rates of growth are also notable for waterborne vs solvent borne coatings, with demand for water-based systems growing at a faster pace, according to Jon Cronin, sales director Coatings EMEA, DSM Coating Resins. “The market his­torically has been dominated by solvent­borne chemistries that provided superior corrosion protection, but market demand and environmental regulations have pushed chemistries toward lower VOC and waterborne technologies,” agrees Shiona Stewart, industry marketing manager for Transportation, Industrial, Furniture, and Floor Coatings with BASF.

Constantly changing voe regula­tions, in fact, have a direct impact on the industrial coatings market, according to Olson. As one example, U.S. states par­ticipating in the Ozone Transportation Commission have agreed to lower the allowable VOC content from 340 g/L to 250 g/L, and some have already begun to adopt the new rule. “Coating man­ufacturers have had to reformulate a multitude of coating systems in order to be within compliance,” Olson says.