subscribe to news New realities of paints and coatings

The Panel on the New Realities of the Coatings Market took place within the conference programme of the Interlakokraska 2023 exhibition.

The panel was organised by EXPOCENTRE AO in partnership with the Centrlack Association, the Quality Paint Association, Russian Hydrogen, with the support of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The event brought together representatives of the largest companies in the industry and heads of leading industry associations. The panel was attended by Mikhail Yurin, Director of the Department of Chemical Technology and Bioengineering Technologies of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The discussion was moderated by Gennady Averyanov, Director of the Centrlack Association and Vice-President of the Russian Chemists Union.

Diana Kudryashova, R&D Director of NIITEKHIM, presented a brief overview of the results of 2022 and the new realities of the coatings market in Russia and the EAEU to the participants of the panel. She focused on the changing landscape of Russian paint and coatings production due to the termination of some foreign companies' operations in the Russian Federation.

The industry-wide trends in production, quality and manufacturability in the industrial and decorative sector were assessed by Valery Abramov, Chairman of the Board of the Centrlack Association - Director of Russkiye Kraski, Mikhail Vakhrushev, Director of NPH VMP, Ivan Kisurin, Managing Director of Talatu, and Sergey Andreev, Deputy General Director of ETS Group.

They pointed to general changes in the coatings industry, such as an increasing share of Russian production, a shift to Asian raw materials and, consequently, different logistics for supplying them. All this, according to the speakers, required companies to work hard to overcome raw material shortages, replace raw material suppliers and make logistics cheaper. Businesses found solutions that allowed them to continue stable production, but at the same time there was a need to develop and increase production of important raw materials for paints and coatings inside the country.

Gennady Averyanov, Director of the Centrlack Association, Sergey Fedotov, Director of the Paint Quality Association, Nikolay Yakovlev, Director General of Yaroslavl Paints OOO, expressed their opinions regarding regulatory opportunities to control the safety of paints and coatings, their quality characteristics in the context of technical regulation solutions and standardisation in the industry.

Mikhail Yurin, Director of the Department of Chemical and Technological Complex and Bioengineering Technologies of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, dwelled on the issues of import substitution of raw materials in his speech. According to his opinion, the development of the Russian raw material base should be in the focus of attention of the government and the industry community. Since the Russian coatings industry is in a kind of isolation, this situation should be used to increase domestic production of raw materials for coatings.

Oleg Podobryansky, Member of the Board of Directors of Pigment, Valery Rammo, Technical Director of Attica, and Eduard Davydov, General Director of Russian Hydrogen, shared their experience with the participants of the panel.

Issues of tariff regulation to support competitiveness of Russian paint and coatings companies were touched upon during the discussion by Anatoly Karpunin, Director General of Gangut PTC, Oleg Kuzin, Director General of Acrylan, and Viktor Kovalev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of KVIL Kraski.

At the end of the panel, the participants adopted a resolution containing specific proposals to the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade to support the paint and varnish industry in creating favourable conditions for its stable operation and further development of the production of paints and varnishes in Russia.

The panel concluded with an important event. The heads of the Centrlack Association and the Paint Quality Association signed an agreement to unite these major industry bodies. This consolidation, according to the participants of the signing ceremony, will have the most positive effect on the coordination of activities of all players on the paint and varnish market in Russia to protect their interests and the interests of the state in the sphere of ensuring technological independence of the country.

Press Service, EXPOCENTRE AO