“Unfortunately, uncertainty remains. We estimate the paint and coatings market will continue to decline in 2013 but slower than in 2012,” said Marius Pintea, market manager with Akzo Nobel Coatings, the local subsidiary of Dutch-based Akzo Nobel.
The company says the local paint market dropped by almost 10% to EUR130 million this year.
“The paint and coatings market continued to decline in 2012, and our estimates for this are somewhere between 7% and 10%,” Pintea said.
The sector was hard hit by the crisis, witnessing decline year by year; only refurbishment and small real estate projects are driving the market now.
This also shows in the amount of paint Romanians use each year, which is 4 or 5 kilos, while the countries in the region use about double as much, 8 kilos in Hungary and 9 kilos in Poland, according to Akzo Nobel Romania.
Despite the market decline this year, the company expects sales to amount to 45 million lei (EUR10 million), up about 11% on last year.
“We’re in line with this year’s growth target. This increase in revenue mainly comes from an increase in sales of coatings and decorative paints,” Pintea explained.
Akzo Nobel Coatings Romania has two divisions, a decorative paint unit, and a unit that supplies coatings and adhesives for the furniture industry, which accounts for less in total sales though, according to the latest information ZF found. It has three coating and decorative paint brands: Sadolin, Dulux and Hammerite.
The top competitors in the local paint and coating industry are Kober Piatra Neamt (owned by the Kober family), Policolor (owned by severak investment funds), Fabryo (owned by Swedish private equity firm Oresa Ventures), Atlas Corporation (Greek investors), Deutek (Advent International). This year saw the first merger in this business, between Fabryo and Atlas Corporation.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)