Actively preparing for the market recovery - AkzoNobel ship and protective coatings high-level interview

The marine and protective coatings market has faced many challenges over the past few years. In particular, China, South Korea, Japan, these major shipbuilding industries and markets, it is clear that the number of new shipbuilding is decreasing. At the same time, the number of offshore oil and gas projects is also declining due to the impact of falling oil
the
. But looking ahead, you can still see the "lights at the end of the tunnel" and expect the industry to slowly recover by the end of 2019 and early 2020. In this interview with AkzoNobel's leadership team in ship and protective coatings, the words felt their confidence in the recovery, as well as a well-prepared positive attitude.
: How do you evaluate the current development of China's marine and protective coatings market?
: According to some research and statistics, the challenges of marine coatings are now cyclical, and the downturn of the past few years has been close to bottoming out. This is a bad thing, but also a good thing, indicating that the market will usher in a gradual rise stage. The same is true of the industries targeted by protective coatings, which have experienced peaks in 2016 and 2017 and have seen some signs of a slowdown in the natural petroleum gas industry in the past two years due to oil prices. Offshore oil and gas projects are recovering and new oil projects are beginning to emerge. So looking to the future is more optimistic.
the Chinese government has very strict requirements and regulations on environmental impact, which is a very sensible move and a very healthy and sustainable policy. In the next few years, the oil and gas industry and many world-renowned enterprises continue to enter China to invest, the future of these new projects from an environmental perspective, must meet world-class international standards. So it's a good situation for our business because the technology and solutions we offer are world-class standards, very environmentally friendly and sustainable.
: What is the current position of marine and protective coatings in AkzoNobel's major coatings sectors and the development of the Chinese market?
AkzoNobel: AkzoNobel's marine and protective coatings business is about 1.3 billion euros, accounting for about 13 percent of Akzo's overall coatings business, while China accounts for 20 percent of total sales in North Asia, which is dominated by China.
For some of the challenges and pressures currently facing the market, our solution is to continue to invest more in research and development innovation, including the opening of a marine and protective coatings research and development laboratory in Songjiang, and the introduction of better solutions, which is what we are doing. We actively mobilize resources to be fully prepared to meet the environmental protection and sustainable development needs of ships and protective coatings. Because we realize that the general direction of the field of marine and protective coatings in the next few years will be these topics.
: What are AkzoNobel's commendable contributions in these areas?
AkzoNobel: The root cause of the use of paint is to make the environment in which you live more beautiful and comfortable. AkzoNobel's marine and protective coatings have many innovations in coating functions, and our coatings can be used to protect bridges, offshore oil rigs or high-rise buildings; Many years ago, Apollo used AkzoNobel's Chartek®proof paint, which provides good protection for Apollo when it passes through the atmosphere as it returns from the moon®
new solutions for marine coatings that, in addition to ensuring sustainability and cleanliness, can also reduce pollution of the marine environment. Sustainable development is not just a reduction in emissions or a reduction in VOC, but also in the cleaner of our marine environment. We are now working with agencies to ensure that plastic content in the oceans is monitored to further reduce the amount and proportion of plastics on the one hand to ensure that they are more environmentally friendly and cleaner.
: AkzoNobel protective coatings in China's major projects, such as the construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge has not contributed?
AkzoNobel: It's a reference to AkzoNobel's infrastructure brand Interchar, where the main role is to protect steel structures, and in the event of a fire, interchar provides protection that gives enough time to escape without affecting the backbone steel structure. Interchar's involves in the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge project is the provision of water-based fire protection coatings for Hong Kong ports.
Wesley Tham AkzoNobel Director of Ship and Protective Coatings Greater China (left)
Oscar Wezenbeek was global director of AkzoNobel's Marine and Protective Coatings (right)
Interchar solution, which can also be used in many stadiums. In general, designers design stadiums or buildings, will not think of after-the-fact fire prevention is particularly considered, it is possible that the steel structure will be very heavy, we will communicate with the architect, to inform them that the heavy steel structure in the fire protection coating will be very expensive, if the use of Interchar or Chartek water-based paint solutions, can greatly reduce the overall cost, but also bring good fire prevention effects.
Here, we would like to tell this market that if the design of buildings, the first design of the venues, and then ask the paint company to design fire protection solutions, it is likely to cost a lot of money, after the use of challenges and difficulties. The correct process should involve coating companies as early as possible in the design process.
: Now that the Chinese government is vigorously promoting water-based, how does AkzoNobel view the process of water-basedization?
AkzoNobel: I believe that the future of water-based is a development trend, water-based decorative paint has become the industry standard, we have done a lot of work in China's laboratory research and development innovation center, hope that water-based technology can be applied to the anti-corrosion environment, I hope that our future water-based protective coatings can also become the industry standard. At present, AkzoNobel has introduced water-like primer solutions in the field of ships.
The challenge in the process of these jobs is not that the water-based coatings themselves are not adequately protected, but that the bigger challenge lies in other aspects, such as water-based product storage problems, especially in winter, and the need for special trucks to prevent freezing. So I don't think protection is a major problem or challenge in itself.
: At present, China's overall environmental trends are becoming more and more stringent, in terms of future development, environmental protection will bring AkzoNobel in China's development of what opportunities and challenges?
AkzoNobel: We are very supportive of the government's environmental initiatives, the higher the government's environmental requirements, the better for us. Our products are excellent, and in the development of a very large number of resources, more investment means that the higher the entry threshold, not everyone can do. So in the long run, this is definitely a good opportunity for our business development. And environmental protection, sustainable development concept is not only our company adhering to a belief, but also each of our employees really practice, so we think the more stringent the better.
: What are the promising markets for the Chinese market in the next two or three years?
: Overall, the outlook for the future of the Chinese market is very good, for most industries, such as the automotive industry, consumer electronics and so on. China's economy grew by 6.5 per cent in the last quarter, which most countries envy. In addition, we will continue to pay attention to the aerospace industry, as well as infrastructure, oil and gas, etc. Overall, the Chinese market is still very attractive.
Addition, we are very confident in this piece of powder coatings, and we recently opened a new powder coatings plant in Changzhou, which is a good example of the fact that we are constantly seeing more new environmentally sustainable solutions. Be aware that powder coatings provide a very sustainable protection solution for aluminum, steel and especially steel structures.
: AkzoNobel recently spun off its chemicals business and will focus more on coatings in the future.
: AkzoNobel is now a more focused company, which really gives us more exciting development opportunities in the future. When we become a more focused company, there are a lot of synergies. As AkzoNobel becomes a more complete and focused company, it will focus more on different business process systems between different companies, thinking about better ways to collaborate and learn from each other, including more attention to how the overall corporate culture creates synergies. As an example, now that we're talking about business planning, there's more consolidation or more focused business planning, so we can understand customer needs from a more complete and unified perspective, turn customer needs into our sales forecasts, and how we can work with the purchasing department. There are more and more opportunities to learn and support each other like this, and I think this atmosphere, this change, this synergy, can ultimately benefit our customers.
, if we look at our executive committee at the highest level from a different perspective, we can actually see a lot of welcome changes. We're talking more focused, just about paint and paint, but at this level of the company's organizational structure, from top executive management to our customers, there's a growing hierarchy, which means that what customers think and say, including what employees say, can be communicated to the top executive committee more quickly, which I think is a very good and welcome change.