The Finishing Touch. How paint and powder is re-shaping our world.

My intention in this article is to discuss the market position and potential growth of paint and powder coating processes, coming at it from the perspective of an equipment reseller that is observing the changes in the industry on a day to day basis.

Riley Surface World is in many ways at the sharp end of the surface finishing and coating industry. Because of our role in buying and selling process plant and equipment, we are subject to the changes and dynamics much more than most companies.

When my father started this business in the mid-1960s, the metal finishing industry was dominated by traditional electro-plating or ‘wet finishing’ sub-contract companies and processes, serving the buoyant manufacturing and engineering industries of that time.

For instance, motor vehicles still had a large amount of visible chrome plated components. These processes were administered by people with very specialised skills that had been handed down over generations. They formed a closed shop that practised the dark arts of electroplating, with far fewer restrictions on the use of harmful chemicals and hazardous working practices than there are today.

At that time, the paint and powder coating processes were in their infancy, very much viewed as the poor relation to more superior electro-deposited immersion coating procedures. Britain’s great manufacturers, such as aeroplanes, cars, construction materials and heavy engineering were still firmly wedded to processes such as zinc plating for volume production finishing.

So what are the factors that are driving the paint and powder coating revolution, and how can our industry benefit from them?

Quality and choice

The first major issue must be quality. Paint and powder chemical companies have made huge strides in improving their formulations. Today’s organic finishes provide greater thickness, consistency, hardness, tensile strength, flexibility and corrosion protection properties. Safety is also a major factor, with paint and powder coatings being resistant to such hazards as hydrogen embrittlement.

In addition, it is possible to select from an almost unlimited choice of colours, textures and effects to suit a massive range of product finishes, from small picture frames to large window frames. These finishes can be applied to a far greater variety of substrate materials, such a lightweight polymers. Just compare today’s mobile phones with a 1960s domestic telephone!

As well as being more predictable and reliable, these organically produced compounds are less harmful to the individuals that work with them and are considerably kinder to the environment, with modern process equipment able to recycle up to 98% of coating residues.

More streamlined

When it comes to efficiency and economy, paint and powder processes are superior to electro-plating in almost every respect. For a start there are fewer stages involved in the process. Typically, there are cleaning and pre-treatment stages, followed by spraying, immersion coating or e-coating. This is usually rounded off with heat treatment stages for stoving, curing, hardening and other requirements.

This compares with plating plants that can invariably have numerous stages for the cleaning and rinsing processes alone, with some plants having as many as fifty 1000 litre tanks, an awful lot of chemicals to be stored, used and disposed. A powder plant usually occupies a smaller actual footprint, with an equal reduction in carbon footprint, as considerably less energy is consumed. Processes such as passivation are not required; there is no need for rectifiers and regulators and much less in terms of effluent treatment, a major factor for electroplating operations.

Skills shortage

Then there are the skills required to operate paint and powder plants in comparison to wet finishing. Electro-plating engineers have been among the most sought-after and highly paid operatives in manufacturing. In contrast, those employed in the paint and powder industry can be trained relatively quickly and are required to know much less about chemical formulations and the intricacies of coating processes.

These skills and knowledge have largely been bypassed by the chemical producers, who present manufacturers with a ready-made formula that is tried and tested. It all adds up to fewer numbers of less skilled people being required. Product testing becomes a formality rather than a barrier to finished production and the finishing properties follow global standards that can be easily understood across international boundaries.

In this instance, there is an analogy with the newspaper printing industrial revolution of the 1980s and 90s. Before the onset of new technology, newspaper production was dependant on numerous trades such as typesetting, compositing and other traditional crafts. Pages were produced in hot metal, with print unions frequently holding publishers to ransom with their high wage demands. All of this has now been replaced by a computerised system that transmits data directly from a PC to the plate-making process, with no stages in between.

Global flexibility

These improvements in product quality, productivity, energy efficiency, toxicity and sustainability are the reasons why manufacturers have become so much more flexible and dynamic in their production strategies throughout the world. Modern paint and powder coating plants cost a great deal less to install and operate and deliver a rapid return on investment. They also have a modular construction that makes them easy to relocate to other parts of the world.

This is why we are seeing so much change throughout the finishing industry. Electro-plating plants are being broken up or mothballed, with their place being taken by modern paint and powder facilities, often in other more competitive manufacturing countries such as China and South-East Asia. In many cases, it is cheaper to dispose of a plant in one country and build a brand new one elsewhere.

In this way, global corporations, such as those working in computers or consumer electronics, can afford to regularly evaluate their production cycles, change course and move finishing plants around the world with much less disruption than in the days of electroplating dominance.

At Riley Surface World, we are seeing the consequences of this trend on a daily basis. As an example, we took the decision to withdraw from the trading of DC rectifiers and transforming regulators recently because the demand had completely evaporated. Redundant electroplating plants are generally going straight to auction or are being decommissioned with very little prospect of renewal.

Upwardly mobile

At the same time, powder lines, pre-treatment lines, conveyor systems, tunnel ovens and other associated items are being installed, operated, mothballed, uninstalled and relocated at a rapid rate. At the same time, the annual consumption of paint and powder-related chemicals is growing at an exponential rate, as the following table illustrates.

Historical and Forecast Sales of Powder Coatings (2004, 2009 and 2014 forecast)

	2004	2009	2014 fc
Volume (million L)	1659	2452	3219
Value (million $)	3851	5440	7215
Average price ($/L)	2.32	2.22	2.24
Compound Annual Growth (%)
Volume		8.1	5.6
Value		7.2	5.8
Average price		-0.9	0.2

Source: International Paint & Printing Ink Council

There is no end in sight to this upwardly mobile sector of the finishing industry. If anything, the growth is expected to accelerate during the current decade, with strong growth in the consumption of organic coatings in the years ahead.

Of course, there will always be a place for electroplating in a diverse finishing industry. The process is still used for very fine coatings and the huge range of electroplating plants around the world will not disappear overnight. However, environmental regulations and the power of the green lobby will only get stronger, putting increasing pressure on those still wishing to maintain their plating capabilities.

Challenges for UK

So where does all of this activity leave the UK, and how can our indigenous industries and government prepare for the challenges to come? Firstly, we need to consider our core industrial base; aerospace, automotive and precision engineering are what we do best. We are no longer renowned for volume component production, the nuts and bolts economy has long gone east.

Our role is to develop the cutting edge properties of paint and powder coating and to be a world centre of excellence for those processes. We have the ability to create added value and to be a benchmark for other countries to follow.

We can also benefit from the huge amount of equipment recycling that is taking place. As used plants become available from the restructuring of large, global corporations, this presents opportunities for smaller, start-up companies to gain a low cost entry into the product finishing market, doing specialist coatings for niche manufacturing.

We are already seeing a growth of new, home-grown paint and powder finishing sub-contractors emerging to fill the void left by the traditional electro-plating companies. This will help to provide the infrastructure for the return of more high technology manufacturing to this country in the near future.