Ravi Kapoor, Managing Director, Heubach Colour Pvt Ltd

The future of the industry is bright; it is up to us to make it shine

In an interview, Ravi Kapoor, with Chemical Today Magazine talks at length about the opportunities for the pigments industry and he opines that although the requirement of all the customers is similar, the winner, however, is the one who makes the product better, stronger, cleaner and cheaper, in a responsible and sustainable manner.

By Shivani Mody

Industry trends in pigments.

The pigment industry globally grows at around 3-4 percent and obviously in the developing world due to the lower consumption base, the consumption growth is much higher. Pigments are fully linked to the economic development and growth of the world and a country. It is interesting to see the historical development of production and consumption of pigments has migrated from the west to the east. Till the 1950s more than 80 percent of colourants were produced in Europe and from the 1950s to the 1990s it was Europe, USA and Japan which produced 80 percent and we now have a situation where 80 percent is produced in China and India.

With regards to consumption of pigments, Asia consumes around 40 percent of the world’s pigments. This shows a clear shift from the west to the east both in production and consumption but more so in production. Regarding the trend of the industry, China is a clear dominant player both in the manufacture and supply of intermediates for pigment production as well as the pigment itself.  However, India also made serious in-roads and currently competes hard with China. We also need to differentiate within the pigments itself as the white and black pigments need to be categorised separately and the coloured pigments can be divided into organic and inorganic. 

Heubach India is in the organic pigments space today. It is also interesting to note that India is a dominant player in the green and blue pigment and China is a clear force in the yellow and red. The reason mainly clear here is that the intermediates for the green and blue are available in India whereas for the red and yellow a lot of the intermediates need to be imported from China. The Chinese strategy has been in the past is to create mega capacities and beat out the competition with the share volume game. This resulted in the exit of main Indian intermediate manufacturers who are simply unable to compete. This has been the story for the last 8-10 year and the Indian producers are dependent on the Chinese intermediate producers for key intermediate for the yellow and red manufacturing. 

However, there are some changes being observed now and the cost of manufacturing in China has slowly but surely increased over the past years and we are now in a situation where the Indian intermediate producers may now come back into the game. In short, Chinese intermediates + duties are simply becoming more expensive and the Indians are back with the chance, especially for domestic consumptions. The Chinese, however, still dominate the napthol intermediates among other areas but there is a sense of balance coming in. 

Another interesting development is that the Chinese government, keeping in mind the waste prone nature of intermediates and pigment production, nudges their producers to sell in the domestic market as they prefer value addition on waste generating prone products. They prefer to go up the value chain as far as possible. All this has presented opportunities to the Indian pigment industry to gear up and increase their global market share. As far as India is concerned the growth of the pigment industry has emanated originally from the textile industry with know-how coming in from Europe. Over the years the industry has developed into all the other applications ie. paints, inks and plastics. This is also due to the fact that India itself has a huge domestic market and of course the global market is always attractive. 

Read more: Ravi Kapoor, Managing Director, Heubach Colour Pvt Ltd