The Andina Paint 2013 was the propitious space to know the expectations that the suppliers of inputs for paints and coatings have regarding the future of their companies in Colombia. The outlook is optimistic but prudent.
by Duván Chaverra Agudelo
The growing and now innovative city of Medellín hosted last March the 2013 edition of the Andean Paint Congress, an event that every year seeks to take companies specialized in supplies for paints and coatings to tour some of the most important cities in the Andean region in order to give opportunity to all professionals in the area to know the latest trends in products and technologies.
The event organized by the Association of Andean Technicians in Coatings (Star) had on this occasion a considerable number of attendees and customers who also visited the Country Club Executives to know the academic offer proposed by the fair for this year.
INPRA LATINA could not miss the details of the most important show in the Andean region and that is why he was present visiting clients and friends of the industry, to tell us about the future expectations that as a company they have within the Colombian market.
Plans and expectations
A company that for the first time exhibited its products in Andina Paint is Rocsa Colombia, specialized in the import and distribution of chemical products, which seeks to strengthen its presence in the paints and coatings market and which presented at the fair inputs such as epoxy resins, precipitated barium sultafo, precipitated calcium carbonate, methylene chloride and organic and inorganic pigments.
For them, the host city of the meeting "has a very recognized image within this segment thanks to the business groups that are here and that stand out globally, and as a company we have to focus on this city if we want to see growth in this market," said Gonzalo Quintero, line manager of the industrial chemicals and construction division of Rocsa.
Gonzalo also highlighted the wide competition that currently exists in the Andean region: "We see very strong competition from other countries, something that did not exist before, such as in Peru, which has been growing much stronger than Colombia; Ecuador is also very active and recording very good figures."
For his part, Andrea Henao, sales representative of the distribution firm MerQuiand, agrees that he was right in the selection of Medellín as the headquarters of Andina Paint, since he knows the importance of exhibiting in a city that has large companies in the sector. "In Medellín there are very large companies, and unlike what we saw in Bogotá last year, here people can invite their entire production chain: to the technical and commercial part, something that perhaps cannot be done in the capital."
Regarding her company's expectations for this year, Andrea is optimistic: "In the paint business we were good, we noticed growth. This year we hope to position all the products that have been launched by the companies we represent and that focus on global market trends: low VOC or that are more effective at lower doses"
On the green issue, the representative of MerQuiand says that in Colombia there is a lack of regulation, because there are a number of products that technically work well, but as there are no regulations that force us to change to friendlier products that do not pollute then the traditional technology is still cheaper and preferred.
In other opinions on the behavior of the market, Omar Ricardo Vera, director of marketing and technical development of Sygla, stressed that in Colombia the sector moves seasonally, since people prepare for the second half of the year (September onwards) and the rest of the months try to sustain a minimum market.
"Industrial growth has been stopped and that affects us, to such an extent that last year the good season was delayed almost a month later than budgeted, and it was assumed that it was going to extend until the beginning of this year and that did not happen, so everyone was frustrated in that sense. With respect to 2013 I don't know if there will be very large growth in this country," said the representative of Sygla.
Similar considerations have Oscar Aristizábal, general manager of the distribution company Sorein, who shared his market results in the previous year and expectations for this 2013. "For us the months of March to June 2012 were difficult, but we made a strategic redirection from June and, taking into account that the paint sector moves more in the second half, we managed to obtain a year with a level of sales very similar to 2011, in which we registered historical sales. For 2013 we have very good expectations because there are new projects and products and opportunities are growing."
On the other hand, from the point of view of a multinational company with a presence in several Latin American countries, Colombia's image seems to be well positioned. "The Colombian economy is expected to show greater growth in the coming years, without competing with other countries such as Brazil and Mexico; and we are confident that this will happen, the start of the year was a bit slow but this is an issue that is happening throughout the regional market, not only in Colombia," said Miguel Urbina, representative of the solvent and coating lines of the Caribbean, Central America and the Andean region of Eastman.
In addition, another of the goals that Eastman had in Andina Paint was to encourage the use of a regulation for the measurement of VOC. "One of the reasons for being at the fair was to support the Colombian market to establish its own standard for the measurement of VOCs; for them we brought In Susan Sims (Eastman's director of regulatory advocacy for special coatings), who gave a seminar on existing methods for measuring VOCs in Europe and Asia, and thus share this information to propose their own method of measurement in Colombia."
The educational contribution
Andina Paint was also a space for training. There, attendees had the opportunity to participate in the first day of a seminar called "Color: the language of positioning your brand", presented by PhD Edison Valencia Díaz, who spoke about the phenomena and perception of color in the human being, the inspection of color quality in products and color as a differentiating factor of a product. In addition, some workshops were developed to measure and control color reproduction.
The other seminar was called "Optimal classification and color adjustment of mixtures of products and industrial intermediates", presented by PhD Germán Ricaurte, who spoke about color in transparent and translucent substances and color in opaque coatings; He also offered several workshops on visual color adjustment exercise, color spectrometry adjustment, among other topics.
The second day of the event offered a list of conferences presented by the different exhibiting companies, among which topics such as New generation of thickeners, presented by Elementis Specialities and Insucolor; New polyurethanes for inks and adhesives in the flexible packaging industry, presented by Stahl de México; Objective selection of polymer dispersions for architectural paintings, presented by Aquaterra; New fluorosurfactant chain, presented by DuPont and MerQuiand, among others.
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