On April 10. the 2025 China International Coatings Conference with the theme of "New Quality Leading Breaking Through" was held in Hangzhou. Experts at the conference pointed out that the task of high-quality development of my country's coatings industry is still arduous, and high-end breakthrough, green transformation, and digital upgrading are the key paths to promote high-quality development of the industry.
Fu Xiangsheng, vice president of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, said that the current world petrochemical industry is undergoing restructuring and adjustment, and the Sinopec industry is in a critical period of innovation and transformation. The high-quality development of my country's coatings industry is imperative. Fu Xiangsheng pointed out that the coatings industry should accelerate the research and development of high-end coatings such as functional coatings, increase product added value, accelerate innovation-driven and green transformation, innovate development concepts, cultivate a large number of excellent multinational companies, and make new contributions to the goal of China's coatings power.
"Although my country's coatings industry has ranked first in the world for 16 consecutive years, and its coatings output accounts for 1/3 of the global output, the industry has prominent structural contradictions, with a surplus of low-end products and a shortage of high-end products. The industry concentration, economic benefits and competitiveness still have a lot of room for improvement." Fu Xiangsheng suggested that in order to achieve the goal of becoming a coatings power, the industry must cultivate a group of world-class companies with international competitiveness, actively benchmark with world-class multinational companies, find gaps, strengths and weaknesses, make up for shortcomings, clarify the development goals and directions of enterprises, and promote enterprises to become stronger and better.
As a frontier position for implementing the "dual carbon" strategy, the green development process of the coatings industry has attracted much attention. Zhang Wenming, a second-level inspector of the Raw Materials Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, emphasized that the proportion of environmentally friendly coatings in my country has steadily increased to more than 60%, and green products such as high-solid coatings, water-based coatings, and powder coatings are accelerating the replacement of traditional solvent-based coatings, providing important support for reducing VOCs emissions and promoting industrial green transformation. However, structural contradictions such as low industrial concentration, insufficient high-end supply, and weak brand effect are prominent, which restrict the high-quality development of the coatings industry.
In this regard, Zhang Wenming proposed that in the future, the coatings industry should promote the integrated development of scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation, enhance the supply capacity of high-end products, accelerate the research and application of domestic coatings and industrial development, improve the independent innovation system of coatings, improve the level of digital development, strengthen the standard-led approach, and cultivate and expand leading enterprises.
"Coatings are the most important means of corrosion control, occupying 75% of the anti-corrosion material market, but my country's high-performance coatings have long relied on foreign brands. It has become a top priority to innovate and develop low-cost, high-performance domestic environmentally friendly coating products." Han Enhou, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of the Guangdong Institute of Corrosion Science and Technology Innovation, said.
"With the accelerated advancement of new infrastructure such as 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, and the Internet of Things, the coatings manufacturing industry is moving towards a new stage of intelligent manufacturing." The vice chairman of a limited company pointed out that the company's intelligent coating digital factory adopts the "Industry 4.0" concept design, and realizes the deep integration of physical production and the digital world through information-physical system technology, optimizes the production process, and improves efficiency and quality.
The meeting also released three "Top 100" lists: "Top 100 Paint Companies in the World", "Top 70 Paint Companies in Asia Pacific" and "Top 100 Paint Companies in China", and held a launching ceremony for a series of activities to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the China Coatings Industry Association.
