Dec 30 2013
Based on its recent analysis of the European resins for protective coatings market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes BASF with the 2013 Product Line Strategy Leadership Award.
The company has demonstrated strong growth by improving portfolio breadth, formulation expertise, and customer value to enhance its brand recognition. Simultaneously, it has undergone restructuring to enhance R&D and project management to align the company's strategies with future goals.
BASF's strategic acquisitions dramatically improved its coating raw materials portfolio and gave it access to many important technologies. This expanded portfolio has allowed the company to market itself as a provider of complete coatings solutions instead of just pure raw-material chemistry.
"The market continues to shift away from using high-solvent coatings, and BASF is leading this conversion by replacing alkyds with acrylic dispersions," said Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Roland Heinze. "The company also looks to replace other conventional technologies to the greatest extent possible with similar competing and more sustainable ones in order to grow faster than the market."
BASF's portfolio now includes polyurethane, acrylic, melamine, and UV-curable resins, as well as light stabilizers, photo initiators, grinding resins, formulation additives, and pigments, all of which help the company fine tune product customization.
Although BASF's competitors offer a broad range of coating resins, including epoxies, silicones, polyurethanes, and water-based acrylic dispersions, they do not provide equivalent formulation expertise in terms of combining resins, pigments, and additives. These companies also lack a presence in the downstream market, which BASF has successfully penetrated with its line of environmentally-friendly Acronal® and Joncryl® product lines.
This extensive portfolio of coating raw materials translates to a wide variety of applications including printing and packaging, furniture and flooring, automotive, transportation, wind power, pipelines, water treatment, agriculture and construction equipment, and direct-to-metal applications and composites.
BASF's current approach to product portfolio development is based on market trends, which has increased the company's brand recognition and new sales opportunities. A continuous stream of opportunities for new high-profile projects will continue to build BASF's brand awareness and increase its market share in resins and additives that are not only used in protective coatings, but also in industries such as automotive, general industrial, furniture and flooring, and printing and packaging.
"BASF's strategy is to focus on sustainability and work with many companies to learn more about the entire spectrum of raw materials," noted Heinze. "It employs in-house experts to make sure that its additives are modified to function correctly, which, in turn, enables the company to rapidly move up the market ladder as a total solutions provider."
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a comprehensive product line that caters to the breadth of the market it serves. The award recognizes the extent to which the product line meets customer base demands, the overall impact it has in terms of customer value as well as increased market share.