Innovation springs from technology centers in Asia
When it comes to innovation, our Asian technology centers are hotbeds of invention and creativity. Located in Shanghai, China, and Bangalore, India, they’re bursting with exciting product developments, helping us lead in our paints and coatings markets with boundary-pushing know-how and expertise.
Serving the growing demand from customers for integrated and tailor-made solutions in Asia and around the world, these centers are equipped with a full array of state-of-the-art material analysis and performance testing facilities.
The Shanghai Technology Center is one of our major hubs, and a driving force in building our company’s innovation capabilities. Its various labs help us deliver quality products to our customers. In line with China’s environmental protection regulations, it focuses on eco-premium solutions, such as water-based and powder coatings products.
A great example is Forest Breath, which was developed by our decorative paints lab. It’s a formaldehyde-free, low emission indoor paint which helps clean the air inside homes and protects against germs. Since the product’s initial launch in 2016, we’ve seen competitors trying to replicate our success. But we’re staying well ahead, and have now raised the level of air quality we can achieve.
That significant improvement in performance means our current products have been upgraded to pass the internationally-recognized GREENGUARD Gold Class and French A+ Class emission certifications – and our customers can continue improving their indoor environments.
Colleagues at our Asian technology centers take great pride in developing products that demonstrate our passion for paint and create value for customers.
Meanwhile, our Bangalore Technology Center has grown significantly since first opening in 2002. It now includes a whole suite of product and service development areas, working mainly on color and achieving the perfect color match.
The facility houses central color teams for all our coatings businesses – so our experts in Bangalore are working for customers across many industries. The color lab is truly unique, developing hundreds of thousands of colors, all in one location.
Achievements at the site include introducing universal colorants for our Marine and Protective Coatings business; formulating coatings for consumer electronics using a tool we developed in our lab; and even using artificial intelligence to create new color formulas.
That’s just a small taste of what’s happening at our technology hubs in Asia. All geared towards discovering new opportunities and creating value for our customers.
A measure of the sustainability performance of our products. An eco-premium solution is significantly better than the offer in the market in at least one mainstream criterion (toxicity, energy use, use of natural resources/raw materials, emissions and waste, land use, risks, health and well-being), and not significantly worse in any other criteria. Downstream benefits include a tangible sustainability benefit for our customers.