The second post-COVID-19 Coatings for Africa Show concluded in Johannesburg, South Africa on June 21, 2024, with the organizers estimating the number of attendees at 2,070 drawn from at least 37 countries.
The three-day event, which was organized in association with the Oil and Colour Chemists’ Association (OCCA) and South African Paint Manufacturing Association (SAPMA), a trade association representing 90% of paint manufacturers in South Africa, also attracted 139 exhibitors from at least 10 countries showcasing diverse solutions for the chemical and raw material segment as well as laboratory, production and packaging equipment.
Other exhibitors displayed testing and measuring equipment and plant machinery.
“The show has been good at least from the number of people who have come to enquire more on our products,” said Dominic Wolff, sales engineer at Orchem (Pty) Ltd, a member of speciality chemicals distributor REDA Chemicals Group with distribution networks in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
This year’s coatings event attracted exhibitors from China, South Africa, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Iran and India, while the attendees were largely drawn from South Africa, Zimbabwe, UAE, Zambia and Tanzania.
“Our show stand has been quite busy, which is probably an indication people are more interested in high quality manufacturing equipment that we deal in,” said Felix Luterbacher, business development manager for Grinding & Dispersing at Buhler.
Buhler has partnered with South Africa’s Rhine Ruhr Process Equipment (Pty) Ltd, which supplies solutions such as agitator, high speed dissolver, wet mill, filling machine, labeling machine, solid conveying and dosing equipment and solvent/water evaporator.
“My company has been participating in the Coatings for Africa event and the 2024 has been good and we look forward to utilizing the event to get more customers,” said Oggie Moila, technical sales representative at ETG, which controls South Africa’s ETG Curechem Limited, ETG Chemicals Zambia Limited and ETG Chemicals Zimbabwe Limited.
For Sujeet Shridharan, vice president for international business development at India-based Narayan Organics Pvt Ltd, which manufactures and supplies copper phthalocyanine crude blue and its derivatives, the 2024 Coatings for Africa event “was good for us as we made useful contacts that will help us grow our international reach.”
“We are currently not in the African market, but we hope the interactions we have had and contacts we have made will yield good results in future,” he said.
But for Judy Yu, commercial manager at China-based Jinan Dongyuan Chemicals Co, Ltd, “the show has been a bit slow for us unlike the Dubai and Thailand ones where inquiries from potential buyers and partners are quite good.”
During the first two days of the event, attendees also had opportunity to access the business presentations hub where at least 19 speakers presented the latest coatings market trends encompassing, market performance, sustainability and the future of the industry in a fast-changing technology era.
Sanjeev Bhatt, managing director of South Africa’s Synthetic Polymers, spoke on the direct-to-metal and auto refinishing coatings market while Petra Mitchell, Southern Africa Corrosion Institute’s executive director, gave a presentation on the importance of corrosion control.
South Africa hosted the 2024 Coatings for Africa event at a time when the country’s key economy industries that drive the coatings market have reported a dip in their performance for the first three months of 2024.
Leading coatings consuming sectors such as mining, manufacturing, electricity, construction, retail trade, motor trade and road transport “were weaker in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the fourth quarter of 2023,” according to a report by Statistics South Africa, the country’s national statistical service.
Performance of South Africa’s construction sector, the top user of paints and coatings, declined by nearly 30% for the three months mainly due to “to a decrease in the completion of non-residential and residential buildings.”
“The manufacturing industry also faced headwinds, recording a decline of 1% with five of the ten manufacturing divisions reporting negative growth rates, with the automotive division the most significant drag on growth,” the report shows.
The paints market is one of the seven retail segments that performed poorly during the period under review as the country’s overall retail trade took a beating.
The report also mentioned that it contributed an added value of approximately ZAR 111 billion (US$6 billion) to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Statistics South Africa reported in March 2024 that the country’s construction sector contributed an annualized added value of ZAR 109.5 billion (US$5.7 billion) to the South African GDP in the fourth quarter of 2023.
“These figures are a sobering reminder of the value and sensitivity of our industry,” says Prof Giel Bekker, director, Graduate School of Technology Management, University of Pretoria, in reference to South Africa’s construction industry.
“As we continue into 2024, forecasts for the industry are optimistic, but several pre-existing constraints may dampen optimism in the short to medium term,” he says.
He added although many sectors reported a decline in the first quarter of 2024, “there are specific local factors that have been and remain significant challenges to the construction industry.”
“These include uncertainty and high logistics costs, corruption, the construction mafia, and our well-known adversary-load shedding,” Prof Bekker said.
South Africa is estimated to be the largest consumer of coatings in Africa with a market volume of 324,000 liters and a value of US$763 million according to recent media reports.