Union Budget 2011-2012. Budget will be presented by Hon'ble Finance Minister in Parliament on 28th February, 2011. Click here for the more information



AkzoNobel targets growth after opening new coatings plant in India
AkzoNobel’s ambition to accelerate growth and increase revenue in India to €1 billion within the next five years has been underlined today by the official opening of a new Industrial Coatings plant near Bangalore.

The facility – which will produce coil and specialty plastic coatings – is located in Hoskote on an existing AkzoNobel site which already manufactures marine and protective coatings, automotive coatings and powder coatings.
“India will develop into one of the world’s economic powerhouses and it ranks very highly on our list of priority high growth countries,” said Leif Darner, the AkzoNobel Board member responsible for Performance Coatings. “We are already well represented in India, but as the largest global producer of coatings, we are committed to making a significant contribution to the country’s continued development.”
Added Conrad Keijzer, Managing Director of AkzoNobel Industrial Coatings: “Increasing our capacity in India is important because local demand is growing. This is being driven by a number of factors, particularly the rapid increase in average household incomes and the associated growth of the housing, construction, consumer electronics and automotive sectors.”

The technologies most in demand include laser-etch coatings for the automotive industry, soft-touch technology for smart phones and coil coatings for high performance steel and aluminum construction markets.
The new Bangalore facility will be capable of manufacturing up to 18 million liters per year, with scope for further expansion. The additional capacity will also boost the company’s ability to meet the growing demand in India and neighboring countries.
AkzoNobel currently employs around 1,500 people in India and operates six production facilities, two research laboratories and around a dozen sales locations, representing activities from across all Coatings and Specialty Chemicals businesses.<more>

Bayer adds color center in India
LEVERKUSEN, GERMANY (Feb. 1, 10:50 a.m. ET) -- Bayer MaterialScience AG has inaugurated a color competence and design center in Greater Noida, near New Delhi, India.
The center offers color matching and small-scale production of polycarbonate compounds.
Leverkusen-based BMS has similar centers in Newark, N.J.; Filago, Italy; Uerdingen, Germany; Map Ta Phut, Thailand; and Shanghai and Guangzhou, China.
(China). The Color Competence and Design Centers are complemented with three Innovation Centers in Leverkusen (Germany), Amagasaki (Japan), and the Polymers Research and Development Center in Shanghai (China).<more>

Interview with H. M. Bharuka, Managing Director, Kansai Nerolac Paints
Your strategy for growth? Any more acquisitions in the pipeline?

Our strategy would be to ride on the growth, create adequate noise & brand salience, expand distribution at the right counters and offer the product range that consumers will lap up. We are sure if we create a service backup winning over customers, the growth will come.

Give your market share in industrial coating, powder coating, PT Chemicals.

We are the market leaders in Industrial coating business with an overall market share of over 40%. Within industrial, in automotive coatings, our market share is over 60%. In Powder Coatings our market share is over 27% and in PT it is over 23%.

Construction activities are on an upswing. What is the break-up between new construction and repainting?

Around 30% of the business gets contributed from the new construction & balance 70% comes from re-painting.

What is your current installed capacity and utilization? Any plans to expand capacity? Do you outsource any activity? Are your units available to others for contract?

Annual Production capacity is 156300TPA (05-06). The capacity utilization has been over 64%. We are investing around Rs1bn in increasing capacity in in the existing units at Jainpur, Lote & Bawal. Some commodity and low technology products are outsourced.

Our units are not available for contracted production for others!

What is the price trend in titanium oxide? With the duty reduction, are the customers being passed on the benefit?

T1O2 prices are stable. The reduction in duty is off set with increase in other areas.<more>


Price Rises
DuPont Titanium Technologies Announces a Price Increase for Ti-Pure® Titanium Dioxide Products Sold in Japan
Effective Feb. 1, 2011, DuPont Titanium Technologies announces a price increase of Yen 40 per kg for all DuPont™ Ti-Pure® titanium dioxide (TiO2) grades sold in Japan.
Momentive Specialty Chemicals Inc. to Raise Prices for Specialty Epoxy Resins in the Americas
Momentive Specialty Chemicals announced that effective March 1, 2011, or as contracts allow, the company will increase prices of the following Specialty Epoxy Resins in the Americas. This increase is driven by the continued cost increases of key raw materials.

Valspar says price hikes not to offset higher costs
Feb 14 (Reuters) - Paint and coatings maker Valspar Corp said a price hike would not offset a higher-than-expected rise in raw material costs in 2011, sending its shares down as much as 3 percent.
Paint makers have been battling rising cost of raw materials such as titanium dioxide and have been passing it on to customers.
Valspar forecast raw material prices to rise in the low double digits in 2011, higher than its prior forecast, and that price hikes would no longer help it offset higher raw material costs, as it had said three months ago.
"There is going to be a lag between the increase in the raw material costs and our ability to recover it in our marketplaces", Chief Executive William Mansfield said on a conference call with analysts.
"The biggest challenge the coatings industry faces is raw material inflation."<more>

Jotun Coatings announces price increase
Acknowledging the steep rise in the cost of raw materials through 2010 used in some coatings, Jotun said that it had been forced to increase prices on some of its products.
However, the company emphasised that price rises have not affected its entire range.<more>

AkzoNobel Powder Coatings Price Review EMEIA
With immediate effect, AkzoNobel Powder Coatings will increase prices for its Products in Europe East, Middle East, India and Africa.
Prices for all major raw materials used in the production of powder coatings have shown double digit increases throughout 2010. AkzoNobel has absorbed the impact of these raw material price increases until now.
A recent further rise in the price of raw materials (due to the scarcity of feedstocks in the required raw materials) has developed since the beginning of 2011 and is predicted to continue throughout the year.
These unprecedented rises have necessitated an immediate adjustment of powder coatings
selling prices by the very latest 1st March 2011. Consequently, for all supplies, selling prices across all Powder Coatings product ranges will be increased throughout the EMEIA region by between 10% and 20% depending on product type. This will partially neutralize the raw material price impact.<more>

Protective Coating Prices Face Global Spike
Fasten your seatbelts. The price of protective and marine coatings is about to spike again globally—perhaps to record highs—and no relief is in sight, manufacturers report.

PPG Industries, Jotun, International Paint (also known as International Protective and International Marine) and Hempel have all recently announced global price increases in their protective and marine coatings products

Solvay to produce  Epichlorohydrin in China using Glycerine as feedstock by 2013....
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ASTM Introduces Corrosion Cost Tool, Updates Standard Coatings Terms
ASTM has developed its first standard for evaluating the lifecycle cost of corrosion protection systems and has revised its standard for coatings terms.
“ASTM A1068 - 10 Standard Practice for Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Corrosion Protection Systems on Iron and Steel Products” covers a procedure for using life-cycle cost (LCC) analysis techniques to evaluate different corrosion protection system designs that satisfy the same functional requirements.
LCC analysis is a method for evaluating alternatives that involve different cash flows over the life of the designated project design.
The method involves calculating the LCC of each alternative capable of satisfying the project’s functional requirement and comparing them to determine the lowest estimated LCC.<more>

PPG Powder Primer Approved for Military Application
PPG Powder Primer Approved for Military Application-Image via Wikipedia
Serving customers in industrial, transportation, consumer, and construction markets and aftermarkets, PPG Industries’ continues its vision to be the world’s leading coatings and specialty products company with MLP80000 primer.
The PPG commercial MLP 80000 powder primer is approved for MIL-DTL32348 specification, which is Type, I military specification for chemical agent-resistant powder primers. Issued in November 2010, the new MIL-DTL-32348 specification for chemical-agent-resistant coating (CARC) powder primer and topcoat has the intent of increasing the use of powder coatings on military vehicles and components by the military.<more>

BASF Hikes R&D, Sells Coatings Unit
BASF SE spent a record $2 billion on research and development in 2010 and will top that this year, putting the chemical giant on track to generate more than $10 billion from innovation efforts by 2015, the company says.
BASF also will be selling off its Surface Technologies business to New Jersey-based Curtiss-Wright Corp. The ST business is a leading supplier of metallic and ceramic thermal spray coatings, primarily for the aerospace and power generation market <more>

Huntsman Announces Capacity Expansion at Singapore Polyetheramines Plant
The Performance Products division of Huntsman Corporation announced that it is going ahead with the engineering design for a 40,000-ton capacity expansion program at its world-scale polyetheramine facility in Singapore.
Huntsman plans to invest more than $70 million at its Jurong Island plant in a move that will more than double the site’s manufacturing capabilities, help satisfy increasing global demand for polyetheramines and strengthen the company’s leadership position in this technology. In the last five years, Huntsman – the world’s leading polyetheramine producer – has seen interest in its JEFFAMINE amines accelerate dramatically.
Polyetheramines are typically employed in epoxy coatings or in additives that enhance the performance of fuels, concrete and pesticides. 

EasyJet Announces Trial of Drag Reducing Nanotechnology
easyJet, the UK’s largest airline, has announced that it is the first commercial airline to trial a revolutionary nanotechnology coating on its aircraft aimed at reducing drag and increasing fuel efficiency.
The high tech coating, already used on US military aircraft, is a polymer that cross links and bonds to the paint surface. The coating reduces the build up of debris on the aircraft’s structure, leading edge and other surfaces, thus reducing drag on the surface of the aircraft.
The manufacturers of the coating estimate that it could reduce easyJet’s fuel consumption by 1-2%. The airline has coated eight aircraft, adding an estimated weight of only 4oz per aircraft, and will compare their fuel consumption with the rest of the fleet during a 12 month trial period. It is estimated that the implementation across the fleet could be equivalent of saving the Co2 burned in 20 flights daily.
Since its launch in 1995, easyJet has always strived to improve its efficiency to keep its costs down. Passengers benefit through low fares and a reduced carbon footprint. As a result, an easyJet passenger is responsible for 22% fewer emissions than a passenger on a traditional airline, when they fly the same route and use the same type of plane.<more>

Nanotechnology mimics nature for antibacterial ‘skins’
Taking a lead from animals such as dolphins and pilot whales that are known to have anti-fouling skins, researchers from the Industrial Consortium on Nanoimprint (ICON) at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) are using nanotechnology to create synthetic, chemical-free, antibacterial surfaces.
The surfaces can reduce infections caused by pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureusand Escherichia coli, and may be deployed on common plastics such as those used for medical devices and lenses. Conventional methods for preventing bacterial surface attachment, say the scientists, often use potentially harmful metal ions, nanoparticles, chemicals or ultraviolet radiation.
Nanoimprint technology, a form of nanotechnology, is a straightforward technique that has been developed by A*STAR's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) to make complex nanometer-sized patterns on surfaces to mimic the texture of natural surfaces. This gives the engineered material 'natural' properties such as luminescence, adhesiveness, waterproofing and antireflectivity.
Dr Low Hong Yee, IMRE's director for research and innovation said: "With millions of years of experience behind her, nature has produced some of the most rugged and adaptable life forms. The antimicrobial surfaces project will demonstrate the versatility of nanoimprinting technology and its benefits to a wide range of industries.”<more>

Berger Paints India net rises 32.96% for Dec`10 qtr
Berger Paints India disclosed a substantial rise in standalone net profit for the quarter ended December 2010. During the quarter, the profit of the company rose 32.96% to Rs 369.10 million from Rs 277.60 million in the same quarter last year.<more>.

Asian Paints: Punar janam lacks life
They have forgotten to pack in the one most important ingredient... and that’s humour. And have instead added on the ‘obsession’ factor, but it falls a little flat



So then how do you depict the durability, the long-lasting effect of a hardware brand? Many routes have been tried by marketers. My most favourite one is the ad done by Greenply plywood some years ago. And that featured a re-incarnation sequence. A young Sikh boy accidentally discovers he was a Tamilian man in his past birth. And the memory is triggered by his wooden table he finds in his past house, which remains as solid as ever. And the exchange in Tamil between the little Sardarji boy and his past life wife Savithri was hilarious to say the least. <more>


Momentive Specialty Chemicals Inc. To Raise Prices For Allyl Chloride, Epichorohydrin and BPA in North America <more>

AKZO NOBEL NV : Nobel hires top executive for Decorative Paints business in China
AkzoNobel's strategic medium-term growth ambitions to double revenue in China, from $1.5 billion to $3 billion, will be further fuelled by the appointment of Lin Liangqi as the new Managing Director, Decorative Paints for China & North Asia <more>

Berger Paints - Publish Audited Results
Berger Paints India Ltd has informed BSE that in respect of the last quarter of the financial year 2010-11, the Company intends to publish the Audited financial results for the entire financial year 2010-11, within 60 days of the end of the said financial year.


1 hurt in industrial flash fire
GREENSBORO — A Sherwin-Williams worker was burned in an accidental flash fire at the company's local plant this morning.The employee, who was not identified, suffered minor burns to his arms and face and is being treated at Moses Cone Hospital.read <more>

Hampton water tower painter survives 110-foot fall
KAUFMAN, Texas
A 21-year-old Hampton man has been hospitalized in fair condition after falling 110 feet from an East Texas water tower.

A Kaufman County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman says Brandon Milley of Hampton fell Sunday morning while painting the North Kaufman Water Supply tower<more>.

Meghmani Organics
Meghmani Organics Ltd has informed BSE about Fire broke out in New Beta Blue Plant at Pigment Manufacturing division at Panoli - Ankleshwar.
Source : BSE<more>