Coatings World interviewed some of the top resin suppliers to the paint and coatings industry: Eric Dumain, Global Marketing Director for Coating Resins at Arkema; Jon Remissong, Commercial Director, EPS; Maria Nargiello, Director of Applied Research & Technology for Industrial & Transportation Coatings, Americas, Evonik; Francisco Cortes, Head of Applied Research & Technology for General Industrial Coatings, Americas, Evonik; Rebecca Lonczak; Marketing Manager, Keyland Polymer Material Sciences; Diana Liu, Product Manager, Lorama Group; Jake Jevric, Corporate VP, Lorama Group Inc.; Markus Bieber, Sales & Marketing Leader, Mallard Creek Polymers (MCP); Robert Ruckle, Global Marketing and Sales Director, Siltech; and Hemant Shah, Business Director, VINAVIL Americas.

CW: How does your company manage to balance customer demands with the rising costs associated with manufacturing resins?

Arkema: Our approach meeting this balance hasn’t changed. Customers seek value above all else – and we strive to offer an array of products that are engineered to match customer price-performance targets – ‘good, better, best’ choices allow formulators to decide which offerings best meet their needs. Resins that are more challenging to produce or have specially procured raw materials must create value for our customers to be suc-cessful. Customers’ understanding of value is almost always enhanced when we as a supplier truly understand their market needs.
A final point – strategic relationships with formulators are very important to identify global end user customer needs. If we can develop products that excel across geographies, our customers can leverage those products to make their operations more efficient and cost effective.

EPS: Our national footprint enables us to strategically manufacture our resins from different locations to reduce shipping costs and optimize logistics. With the acquisition of Specialty Polymers Inc., we have expanded our geographic footprint, which will allow for further optimization of our logistics.

Keyland Polymers: We are doing everything we can to manage the supply chain shortages by forecasting and securing raw materials so we can continue supplying resin. Unfortunately, our costs have increased and we have had to pass some of those cost increases along to our customers.

Lorama: Our Bio Based resins have multiple functionalities, including the ability to lower the overall cost of Sol-vent Based Alkyd Resins. Often Lorama’s bio-based LPRT resins are used to mitigate rising costs.

MCP: MCP works closely with our entire supply chain of raw materials to manage rising costs and tries to min-imize the impact to our customers.

Siltech: In 2021 we passed on the raw material price increases which were multiples – not percentages – of the early 2021 costs. Although we tried to minimize the price increases to our customers in terms of frequency and impact, by Q3 2021 we could not predict or control the frequency. We typically passed on the raw material increases without margin to minimize the impact to our customers which was as much as we could control.

Vinavil: It has been an on-going and challenging task to get reliable forecasts from customers in order to meet with their growth needs. With rising costs for supplies and logistics, we were forced to implement price increas-es. In spite of this, in most cases, we have seen increased demands for product and not enough product for supplies. Now, with the increasingly unstable geopolitical situation, we have seen many price increases of im-ports due to rising energy costs in Europe and we expect some increases for the North American markets due to higher oil pricing, as well as increased raw materials and transportation costs related to higher fuel costs.

CW: Please list two new Resins developed by your company followed by a brief description.

Arkema: SYNAQUA 4856 bio-based alkyd emulsion, made from 97% biobased raw materials coming predomi-nately from Nordic foresting byproducts and designed for interior low emission matte to gloss wall paints ENCOR Flex 1361 all-acrylic elastomeric latex, used to formulate cool roof coatings that provide waterproofing as well as long-term reflectivity and durability that help with energy savings and carbon footprint reduction of new and existing buildings.

EPS: We are launching EPS 2436 this month, a new self-crosslinking all-acrylic resin for use as a binder for high-quality wood coatings. EPS 2436 is the latest resin in the EPS 2400 series, a line of waterborne acrylic resins that wood coating formulators can use to develop high-performance solutions for industrial applications, cabinetry, furniture, and flooring.

Another product we recently launched is EPS 2157, an all-acrylic adhesive resin for protective films for appli-ances, doors, and glass and any applications where protective masking is required. EPS 2157 distinguishes itself from other resins in this space, offering a “soft” peel as compared to other products with equivalent peel and tack that have a harder “zip-like” peel.

We are in the process of integrating our business with Specialty Polymers and our focus on waterborne acrylic resins will allow us to build on our combined strengths and bring new innovative products to the market.

Evonik: SILIKOFTAL HTW 3 is a silicone polyester resin emulsion. It is a waterborne, low-VOC product and can be used in compliance with FDA 175.300 and BfR XV.
SILIKOPHEN P80/MPA is a non-reactive methyl-phenyl silicone resin. It is solventborne, exhibits good air-drying, and is and BTEX-free. It is especially suitable for low-VOC formulations.

Keyland Polymers: UVE5100 – Epoxy-Methacrylate 100% Solid UV/EB curable resin for general interior applica-tions on wood, plastic, composite, and metal substrates.
UVP1300- Unsaturated Polyester-Methacrylate 100% solid UV/EB curable resin for high performance wood coat-ings, clear or pigmented and direct application over metal. Features excellent outdoor durability with good pig-ment, wetting, and scratch resistance.

Lorama: LPR 221 is Lorama’s newest bio-based resin additive that is used lower the cost of solvent based Short, Medium and Long Oil Alkyds. In addition to our workhorse LPR 76 resin, our new LPR 221 ensures sol-vent based Alkyd paint suppliers can continue to provide high quality paints with less reliance on solvents and an overall more cost effective paint formulation.

Vinavil: We launched Vinavil 4550, a VeoVa-based copolymer emulsion for Interior, exterior, and masonry coat-ing applications. The formulated paint offers an alternate technology to the acrylic technology that has dominat-ed the North American market for decades. Our newly launched product provides the “performance of acrylics without acrylics for paints and coating,” including high alkali- and water- resistance, better scrub-resistance, and high pigment binding capacity, as well as flexibility to formulate end products for many different applications with one polymer. This would help reduce number of polymers needed to make different paints. This cost-effective technology is effective for many applications.

The technology has been popular in Europe over 50 years. The VeoVa monomer is a long chain molecule with 10 carbon atoms and provides steric hinderance (umbrella effect) to the polymer chain for the attack of water or alkali as well as higher capacity for pigment binding (high PVC paint). These products are manufactured and available in North America to serve the needs of the Paints and Coating market. As VINAVIL’s Managing Direc-tor, Taako Brouwer stated in an interview with Specialchem in July 2021, “The advantage of this technology is that, unlike acrylic-based polymers, which are based on 100% propylene, VeoVa is based on ethylene gas, which is a shale gas produced in North America. Propylene supply is expected to remain an issue for the fore-seeable future. There is just not enough supply to meet the huge growth in demand for propylene deriva-tives. And the steam cracking process produces about twice as much ethylene as propylene. If you look at North America specifically, the low-cost shale gas means there is a huge supply of ethylene. Ethylene-based technology will remain more available than propylene-based technology. Vinyl VeoVa-based systems, feature a formulation that is approximately 80% ethylene-based, relying on the less available propylene for approximately only 20% of the formulation on average. This vinyl VeoVa technology offered by VINAVIL has been used in Europe for over 50 years and, in the last five years, it is finally being adopted more within the United States.”

Another great product we have launched is CRILAT 4747, which is designed for direct-to-metal (DTM) applica-tions. (In Europe, this is known as CRILAT 8747.) The product is acrylic copolymer, which, when formulated properly, gives a high gloss finish, tough film build, excellent pencil hardness and block resistance, high humidi-ty resistance, good chemical resistance, excellent corrosion resistance (both flash rust and salt fog resistance); as well as excellent adhesion to ferrous, steel, aluminum, and galvanized substrates in both wet and dry states. It also provides excellent adhesion to HIPS (high impact polystyrene). CRILAT 4747 is very versatile and com-patible with commonly used coalescent (such as DPnB and Texanol) and other raw materials. When properly formulated, this new polymer also meets C3-S or C3-M corrosion-resistance specification ISO 12944 for urban and industrial atmosphere with moderate pollution, coastal areas with low salinity.