China Coatings Industry Association Powder Coatings Coating Branch of the first session of the third Council successfully held

In 2015, the 193 member states of the United Nations formally adopted the Sustainable Development Goals at the summit. Based on these 17 goals, the China Coatings Industry Association proposed the goal of sustainable development of China's coatings industry in 2022. As an important category of industrial coatings products, powder coatings have become a very rapid development field in the industrial coatings industry in recent years due to their environmental protection, high utilization rate, convenient storage and transportation, and out-of-the-box advantages. It is a coating product that meets the requirements of sustainable development and green and low-carbon.

As an environmentally friendly coating product, in recent years, powder coatings have been widely used in building materials, automobiles, home appliances, furniture, general industry, construction machinery, MDF customized furniture and other fields, and have been used in steel structures, new energy batteries, and energy storage equipment., Coils, containers, commercial vehicles and other fields gradually explore its use, showing a good momentum of development. The growth rate of powder coatings for many years is higher than the average level of the coatings industry. At the same time, in the field of coating, powder coating has the characteristics of no pollution, zero VOCs emission, high recovery rate, simple coating process and high degree of automation. At present, it has been widely recognized by the market as "4E type" (high production efficiency, excellent coating performance, ecological environment protection, high cost performance) environmental protection green coating. Promoting the application of powder coatings in different coating fields will not only help to reduce VOC emission from the source, but also reduce the carbon footprint in the product life cycle and promote the energy saving and carbon reduction requirements of the whole industry chain of coating.

According to statistics, in 2023, the number of powder coating manufacturers in China exceeded 6,000, but the overall market concentration was low and the market was relatively fragmented. In addition, in the Chinese powder coating market, although Akzo Nobel in the Netherlands, PPG in the United States, and Aiyue in Taiwan still occupy the top three in the industry sales, from the overall market point of view, domestic independent brands occupy a larger market share. Judging from the sales of the top 100 companies in China's powder coating manufacturers, their market share is 49.22, of which the market share of local companies exceeds 40%. Local enterprises generally have obvious advantages in cost control, mainly promoting medium and low-end powder coating products, and constantly improving their product competitiveness and brand competitiveness; the market share of foreign-funded enterprises is less than 10%. With the advantages of technology and brand resources, foreign-funded enterprises mainly cover the application fields of medium and high-end powder coatings. From the market development trend, we can observe that the technical differences between local enterprises and foreign brands are getting smaller and smaller, and the product quality and cost performance are getting higher and higher. Some emerging application fields such as MDF panel customized furniture powder coating, color coated board, steel structure, container and other fields have occupied a leading position.

Although in 2023 by the post-epidemic global economic turmoil, China's real estate industry downturn and other factors, the overall sales of powder coatings reached a record high of 2.15 million tons, an increase of 6% year-on-year. However, because the sales price of raw materials continues to be at a historically low level, the average price has decreased year-on-year, which is lower than the 2022 40 billion. In 2023, the market size of China's powder coatings will be about 39 billion yuan.

From 2018 to 2023, the overall sales volume of powder coatings in China showed an overall growth trend in the past six years, with an average compound growth rate of more than 7.18 from 2018 to 2023, outperforming the industrial coatings growth market.

In this Council we discussed:

Statistics and ranking of various sectors of the industry in 1.2023;

2. New governing units;

3. Introduction to the income and expenditure of the branch;

4. The current situation and plan of standard formulation. At present, 15 league standards led by the branch are in progress;

5. Summary of industry activities held in the past year;

6. Planning of industry activities planned for the coming year;

7. Joint project with Environmental Planning Institute of Environmental Resources Department: introduction of powder coating promotion project;

8. August Shanghai International Coatings Exhibition "Powder Pavilion" project introduction;

9. Docking action plan with the downstream user industry concerned by the Council;

10. Industry support policy guidance initiatives.

The Council once again spoke highly of the efforts of the branch, TGIC finally re-entered the National Development and Reform Commission's "Industrial Structure Adjustment Guidance Catalogue (2024)" and took effect on February 1. This is an important milestone for the powder coating industry to finally be noticed by government decision makers.

In 2024, the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, the Arab-Israeli war, the Sino-US game, the external environment is complex and severe. China's powder coating industry must focus more on the inner cycle, that is, to find more local applications. The 20th National Congress once again clarified the main theme of the development direction of the green industry, and the increasing pressure on environmental protection provided good policy support for the replacement of solvent-based coatings of "paint to powder. The price fluctuation of raw materials is still frequent, with overcapacity and "double control and double carbon" of energy consumption. Under such circumstances, the powder coating industry should increase the expansion of unmarket applications and develop the technology and market application development in the application fields of containers, civil light steel structures, power batteries and energy storage, color coated boards, MDF customized panel furniture powder coating, construction machinery and agricultural machinery, commercial vehicles, and passenger car body powder coating, the conversion process of low-temperature curing products and infrared radiation curing technology must be accelerated. These market capacities are visible on the 500-80 billion scale. It can also drive the increase of 300-50 billion on the supply side of raw materials and the market potential of coating equipment not less than 10 billion.

In the future, with the improvement of national energy conservation and environmental protection standards, the continuous promotion and implementation of green industrial policies will directly affect and improve the demand of downstream industries. In addition, the continuous innovation and progress of powder coating application technology will also open up more new application scenarios to achieve new application directions such as upgrading of coating performance parameters or cost control. With the continuous development of the country and the replacement of "paint to powder" and "water to powder" categories, it is expected that the growth rate of China's powder coating market will continue to grow at an annual growth rate of 6%-10% from 2024 to 2028. If the large application fields of powder such as containers, construction machinery, color coated plates, civil light steel structures, batteries and energy storage, large central water and gas pipe networks, etc. can be "powdered" in batches ", in 2026, the market size of China's powder coatings will probably exceed 50 billion yuan and 2028 exceed 60 billion.

Industry development opportunities

01 Consumption upgrade brings huge replacement space for powder coating products

The continuous upgrading of consumption will drive the continuous upgrading of the manufacturing industry, and consumers' demand for product quality and environmental protection is also constantly improving, from paying attention to product practicality to not only paying attention to product practicality, but also pursuing the added value of products. such as decoration, environmental protection and so on. Therefore, in order to meet the expectations of consumers, the raw materials used will also change. Powder coatings are both environmentally friendly and decorative, and will become the coating of choice for more and more consumer products.

02 Green development drives the rapid development of powder coating market

In recent years, the country has gradually shifted from focusing on air pollution to focusing on water pollution and soil pollution. Countries and regions have issued many policies to deal with the pollutant emission problems in the coating industry and downstream application industries, which to a large extent promotes the implementation of "paint to powder" and "water to powder" in the use of coatings in various industries. The environmental protection advantages of powder coatings will become more and more prominent, and "paint to powder" and "water to powder" in some application fields will become the mainstream trend of coating development in various fields.

03 The structural adjustment of the coating industry will establish the dominant position of powder coatings.

The coating industry belongs to the subdivision of chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing industry, and the laws, regulations and supervision of safety production and environmental protection are becoming more and more strict. The industry has also adjusted its industrial structure. The "14th Five-Year Plan for the Coatings Industry" mentioned that with the adjustment of the industrial structure, by 2025, environmentally friendly coatings will account for 70% of the total output of coatings. As a typical environmentally friendly coating, the output of powder coatings will also increase.

04 powder coating industry chain integration to promote the healthy development of the market

At present, the number of enterprises in the powder coating market is large, but most of them are small enterprises, the number of enterprises with core competitiveness is small, and the market concentration is low, but this situation will not continue. Following PPG's acquisition of Huajia in 2022, Beixin Coatings, a subsidiary of the world's top 500 China Building Materials Group, also officially entered the powder coating industry in August 2023. Powder coating market in the government's leadership, the head of the enterprise support is gradually beginning to carry out industrial chain integration. Low-end, non-compliance, homogenization of serious powder enterprises will face elimination, and positioning of high-end enterprises, the advantages will gradually highlight. The integration of the industrial chain will enable upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain to form close strategic partners, promote continuous innovation in the industry, and achieve sound development.

Challenges facing the industry

01 product and coating technology breakthrough is imminent

At present, the technical specification of coating is difficult to break through, which limits the pace of popularization and application of powder coatings. Although some achievements have been made in the research of low temperature curing process, regular general-purpose products still need curing temperature above 180 ℃. High curing temperatures not only consume more energy and increase costs, but also limit the application of powder coatings to heat-sensitive materials. Cooling to 150°C will be the club's goal for the next two years. In addition to the low-temperature curing process, the coating technology of super-large parts and super-heavy parts of powder coating technology, rapid color change technology, chemical surface treatment and pretreatment wastewater treatment technology are also in urgent need of innovation and breakthrough.

02 Raw material prices fluctuate frequently

Although China's powder coating raw material market has become the world's largest manufacturer in many fields such as polyester resin, epoxy resin, curing agent, additives, titanium dioxide, etc., due to poor market coordination and lack of supervision, there is widespread production capacity Excess, high degree of homogeneity, relatively scattered enterprises, large enterprises that lack dominance, international status and market discourse power are light, and they are easily affected by international crude oil prices and market supply and demand. Although prices are relatively stable in 2024, systemic issues remain unresolved. Industry norms and self-discipline, effective control of new capacity, through the collection to improve bargaining power to resist price fluctuations, frequent and large price fluctuations are not conducive to the promotion of powder coatings. How to reduce the adverse impact of raw material price fluctuations on the market under the premise of ensuring product quality has become an urgent challenge for the powder coating industry.

At present, the coating coating process of each major downstream industry is developing in the direction of energy saving, environmental protection and sustainability, and strives to realize the green production of zero VOCs emission in the whole process of coating. The powder coating industry should increase investment in scientific research while reducing costs and increasing efficiency, break through the key technical problems restricting the development of the powder coating industry, actively expand downstream application scenarios, grasp the development opportunities brought about by high-pressure environmental protection policies, and give full play to the environmental protection advantages of powder coatings. The whole industry should consciously assume social responsibility, seize the opportunity, and achieve high-quality development. The powder coating industry will surely face the vigorous development of the times.