Sandtex Relaunch, A Shift Towards Cleaner Technology - Prof Alo
Paint
By Bennett Oghifo
The three variants of Sandtex Paints relaunched last week by its developer, Portland Paints and Products Nigeria Limited has been described as a response to global call for the the use of cleaner technologies in goods manufacture.
Globally environmental enthusiasts and experts have introduced "cleaner production" for all spheres of human endeavours especially business practices including product development and manufacturing.
Cleaner Production is defined as the application of preventive environmental strategies applied to processes, products and services.
The overall aim is to: increase overall efficiency and productivity; improve business opportunity; reduce human and environmental risk and reduce waste, environmental protection and the installation of environmental management Systems in business practices provide and competitive advantages for companies; better clients:
The financial and operating advantages of cleaner Production make for better clients in the shareholders and the customers.; better investments: for shareholders, environmental protection and the installation of environmental management systems and cleaner production in their business practices commonly lead to better investments; steps to avoid waste and its hidden costs; improved business practices and ethics cleaner production is seen to be a cost-effective alternative to future clean-up costs that could be imposed on the industry. Statistics show that the transition to environmentally-friendly paints has been slow.
Speaking at the relaunch of Sandtex Trowel, Sandtex Matt, and Sandtex Textured, Professor Babajide Alo, the immediate past president of Nigeria Environmental Society (NES) said that by 2004, it is expected that over 50 percent of the paints and coatings in the market will still be traditional solvent-based paints containing less than 65 per cent solids.
The challenge for paint and coating formulations, Prof. Alo said is to find effective, non-Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) alternatives to solvents such as xylene, toluene and other aromatics and to develop technologies that exclude the use of solvents entirely, such as powder coatings, UV/radiation-cured coatings and high solid coatings. Manufacturers are also increasingly looking for aliphatic solvents, such as butyl acetate, acetone, esters, alcohols and glycol esters. But we have to be careful because while VOC-free products might represent a valuable marketing tool and offer good financial returns, they have also come in for a considerable amount of criticism.
Life-cycle analysis techniques are showing that some of the 'environmentally friendly' components that need to be added to the coatings to achieve the same technical sophistication are, in fact, more damaging to the environment than the solvents that they are replacing. For example, water-based paints require a number of chemical additives to maintain a stable dispersion during storage. Some of these additives are toxic, and because they are water soluble, they are potential water pollutants.
Alo said these three variants, which carry a five-year guarrantee, "constitute a set of unique environmentally friendly products for which the company is even bold to give a five year guarantee on even in outdoor use".
Alo, a Professor of chemistry, sugggested that a paradigm shift was inevitable for the paint manufacturing sector in the millennium years, 2000 onwards. "This is where Portland and Products is ahead of its competitors..."
He said in the company's repositioning exercise, there was need to put envirorunental consciousness in the front burner of all decision making in order for the company to continue to remain upfront. "Hence I hasten to suggest that as the Portland Paints Company repositions, it needs to insist on the adoption of and implementation of Environmental Protection strategies in all spheres of the Company's operation. Such strategies have been found worldwide to be profitable and of tremendous advantage to remain ahead of competitors".
He said although it is difficult to predict the future, but maintained that the paint industry certainly is on the move.
"We expect opportunities to emerge for companies with the acumen to move into the right place at the right time' and we predict that new products and materials will appear in the market to satisfy regulatory controls and consumer expectations. We anticipate that more stringent environmental laws will complement the innovation".
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