Paints and coatings
Paints and coatings protect and colour buildings, cars, ships and goods; a roughly $200 billion formulated-products industry built on TiO2 and oil-derived resins.
Specialty chemicals · Coatings, adhesives & colourants · No. 82
- Product family
- Feedstock: Minerals and salts
- about 50 Mt a year (indicative, basis: about $200 billion at an average of about $4/kg; no volume figure found in public sources)
- 1.8 t CO₂e per t
- HS 320890, 320990
The biggest slice of carbon in a tin of white wall paint comes from its white pigment, titanium dioxide.
Chart: Illustration: Paints and coatings
Where it comes from
Chart: Map of where it comes from
Paint is formulated, not synthesised: a decorative emulsion holds about 150-250 kg of titanium dioxide per tonne, bound by acrylic or vinyl polymers.
Three things to know
- The top four coatings makers sell about $58 billion a year, roughly 29% of the market, led by Sherwin-Williams at $19.8 billion.
- Birla Opus added about 31% to India's decorative paint capacity, sparking discounting and dealer incentives since 2024.
- India has limited lead in household paint to 90 ppm since 2016, but has no binding VOC limits for decorative paint.
The journey
- 1 Raw materialsTiO2, monomers, resins, extenders, solvents
- 2 Resin makingEmulsions and alkyds polymerised in-house
- 3 DispersionPigments milled into binder, then thinned
- 4 Tinting, retailSold through dealers and tinting machines
- 5 On surfacesWalls, cars, ships, machines and goods