The burgeoning usage of urethane-based coating additives in the automotive, industrial, and construction applications is a major factor responsible for their soaring sales across the world. Moreover, the rapidly growing construction industry, especially in the developing countries of Latin America and Asia-Pacific, on account of the huge investments being made in various infrastructural development projects, is massively pushing up the requirement for coating additives. According to many industry experts, the sales of these additives will be considerably high in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in the future years, primarily because of the mushrooming production of these additives in China.
The other major factors fueling the global demand for these additives are the increasing R&D (research and development) activities being conducted in several countries, especially in North America, and the rising awareness amongst the masses about nano coatings and green buildings across the world. Due to the increasing pollution levels and environmental degradation all over the world, the governments of many countries are increasingly enacting policies aimed at reducing the utilization of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and encouraging the usage of water-borne coatings. This factor is making a huge positive impact on the global sales of coating additives.
Thus, with the growing popularity of coating additives, the global
coating additives market will register explosive growth in the coming years. Coating additives are basically low-level ingredients that have certain paint characteristics such as de-foaming, good flow and leveling, and mildew resistance. These additives are commonly formulated into solvent-borne, powder, and water-borne. In the water-borne coatings, water is used as liquefying agents. These coatings do not produce toxic emissions and are widely used in applications pertaining to compact or closed areas. On the other hand, the solvent-borne coatings use organic solvents such as enamels and polyurethanes as liquefying agents.
The presence of these toxic chemicals and volatile organic compounds makes the solvent-borne coatings extremely hazardous in nature. Speaking about the powder coatings, electrostatic attraction is used here for applying paints. This method allows these coatings to provide a finish having desirable thickness, flexibility, and improved coating durability. Apart from these additives, the other types of coating additives heavily used all over the world are solvent less and radiation curable.
Wetting and dispersion, biocidal and impact modification for overcoming the surface problems and defects that usually occur during post-drying periods or paint application, rheology modification, and anti-foaming are the major functions of these additives. They possess various properties such as surface modification, drying, anti-settling, anti-sagging, and leveling, which make them ideal for use in a plethora of applications in the industrial, automotive, architectural, and wood and furniture industries. Furthermore, these additives are extensively used in construction paints for improving the viscosity, surface-effectiveness, and impact resistance of substrates.
Hence, it can be safely concluded that the sales of coating additives will shoot-up across the world in the forthcoming years, mainly because of the ballooning requirement for these additives in multiple industries such as automotive, architectural, and wood and furniture and the increasing number of construction projects being launched in several countries around the world.
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