Jotun Powder Coatings is working at developing products that will address the needs of its architectural and functional segments, a senior official has said.

General manager Ram Ramnath said the architectural segment’s needs included improved aesthetics such as new colours, new metallic finishes and stronger sustainability through improved heat reflection.

Products like ColourBeats and the Cool Shades Collection had made progress towards those ends, he said.

In the functional segment, the need was for products that worked well at higher operating temperatures as well as products that were multi-layer powder-coating alternatives to the conventional three-layer polyolefin systems. Ramnath said Jotun had pioneered the development of tailor-made products such as the HOT range (High Operating Temperature products) and the J-Trac system, a three-layer powder-coating system.

The official said products for the architectural and functional segments represented the biggest growth in 2010 while industrial products suffered a slight fall in demand.

For 2011, the company is targeting 15 per cent growth. Jotun claims it maintains a 70 per cent share of the powder coatings segment in the GCC region excluding Saudi Arabia, where the group operates another manufacturing unit based in Dammam.

The company is focusing on investing in and developing sustainable, high-performance and technologically advanced coatings.

“Last year we focused more on sustainable technologies and products. Being solvent-free, Jotun Powder Coating products release negligible amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air. In addition, all of Jotun’s pigments are lead-free which means the products can be disposed of easily and safely, while unused or oversprayed powder can be recovered and reused for minimal wastage. The recent Cool Shades Collection launch was a positive addition to our sustainability credentials,” said Ramnath.

The Cool Shades Collection is a powder-coating technology with heat management properties that can reduce surface temperatures by more than 15 degrees while allowing colours to maintain their vibrancy.

According to Ramnath, the Cool Shades technology also addresses one of the major problems that urban areas face, which is the Urban Heat Island effect.