Hempel Paints Middle East has announced expansions and new facilities in the region to boost turnover from the 2004 figure of $70 million, a senior official said.

Chris Hutton, group vice president for regional business, said he expected turnover in 2005 to rise 20 per cent over the previous year’s level with demand growing in all segments following the continuing construction boom and increased shipping activities.
Expansions and new production facilities will raise capacity by around 40 million litres per year, the official indicated.
The company’s largest regional plant at Dammam, which is also the third largest Hempel facility in the world, is contemplating an expansion through debottlenecking and installation of new machinery to add 5 million litres to its current total capacity of around 30 million litres per year.
“The Dammam plant contributes $45 million to our turnover,” says Hutton. The plant, which began operations in 1973, was originally set up to provide protective coatings for Saudi Aramco. Before the plant was installed, Hempel supplied Aramco from its Kuwait facility.
Protective coatings, widely used by oil and gas companies and power stations, continue to be an important segment of the Dammam production, around a third of the volume. Decorative paints take the lion’s share at 65 per cent with marine paints accounting for the remainder. 
Hempel’s Kuwait plant, its second largest in the region, produces 12 million litres annually, mostly higher-end decorative products, and sales are said to have tripled in the last three years. “There will be another factory in Kuwait with a production capacity of about 20 million litres,” announced Hutton.
The company has two other plants making marine and protective paints, one in Qatar and the other in Sharjah. The Qatar facility, which has a capacity of 5 million litres per year, supplies to the country’s energy and infrastructure markets, The Sharjah plant’s capacity is 6 million litres and a major portion of its production goes to Dubai Drydocks.  The plant will be supplemented by another facility of 10 million litres to be built at another location in the emirate. Its focus will be marine and protective paints.
Hempel is building a factory in Syria that will have an initial annual capacity of 5 million litres, doubling up within a year or two.
A Bahrain Hempel plant is no longer in the Hempel Group. Its 25-year licence was not renewed by the group when it expired at the end of 2004.
Hempel Paints has set up a new regional Middle Eastern head office in Bahrain.
The west regional office will be situated in the company’s new showroom in Sitra, just opposite the new Sitra Mall in the kingdom. The company also announced a new venture business partnership with Al Zayani Commercial Services for the distribution of Hempel brands in Bahrain.
Reviewing Hempel’s position in the region, Hutton said: “In protective and marine coatings, we’re number 1; in decorative, because we operate only in the premium end of the market, we’re second.”
Worldwide, Hempel is second only to International Paints in marine paints. Hempel boasts 150 stock points across the globe and invested $50 million to develop a tin-free anti-fouling medium.
Hutton attributes his company’s success to both the quality of its paints and accompanying services to customers. “We supply technical services to make sure protective coatings are applied correctly for expensive assets of all descriptions,” says Hutton.
“The decorative paints business has the same Hempel technology for high performance but also the capability to make the product look good.”
The company is currently engaged in a big project for the Hilton Group in Jeddah. Other projects it is involved with include the main municipal building in Jeddah, the international airport in Kuwait and the Marina Mall, also in Kuwait, as well as the El Malaz Royal Sports Stadium in Riyadh and several private villas in various Gulf states.
Hutton notes that while paint accounts for 2 per cent of the cost of construction, it covers 90 per cent of the eye’s sweep. “We encourage people to leverage that 2 per cent to make the structure really beautiful at a modest cost. Our most expensive projects are very much cheaper than alternative material such as marble, fancy stone and ceramic tiles.”
Hutton also said Hempel decorative paints lent themselves to easy washing and were good for 20,000 scrub cycles.      
Hempel’s marketing campaign is focused on decorative products including the Platine range of polyurethane industrial-strength building-protection products; Dana, a range of pure acrylic emulsions developed for durability and beauty and described by the company as the “pearl of paints,” and Topaz, a range of acrylic emulsions and textures, alkyd enamels, primers, undercoats and fillers, all of which are suited for interiors and exteriors.
The company is also promoting Casa, a range of durable decorative textures and conventional paints that produce final finishes reminiscent of the plasters commonly found in and around the Mediterranean, and Fusions, described as an easy-to-use water-based range for decorative painting.
“From its foundation in the Middle East, Hempel has been a significant contributor to the development of the region, supplying paints and coatings to all the major industries including Aramco and Sabic and to the domestic decorative market too,” a company spokesman says. In decorative paints, the spokesman underlines that Hempel’s commitment has been to design products appropriate for the Middle East market.
“That means improving the quality that owners expect and introducing new technologies to meet that increased expectation.
“It also means introducing products with the applicator in mind and concentrating on products that are easier to apply, require less training time and provide an end result that is more reliable, more beautiful and more impressive.
“It means a focus on water-based products that are more pleasant to apply and more consumer and environmentally friendly.”
On protective coatings, the spokesman says they are varied, from an epoxy system designed to protect concrete surfaces and floors to protective coatings that prevent corrosion of steel on land and in the water.
Products designed to protect infrastructure such as oil and gas structures, storage tanks and bridges include high-build epoxies and surface-tolerant primers, cathodic protection and new systems such as Hempaxane and new products based on epoxy-siloxane formulations.
“With such a variety of areas to be protected and so many product options, this is where professional advice and service come into their own,” says the spokesman. “System analysis is critical and the experience of the Hempel staff is vital to design specialised systems that meet the owners’ needs.”
In marine paints, Hempel claims it was the first to offer ready-made coatings for ships, producing them in 1915. Its marine products include anti-foulings, top-structure protection and products to protect cargoes carried inside the ship’s holds and tanks.
Hempel was among the first to launch a range of TBT-free anti-foulings in compliance with the IMO convention of October 2001. “The Globic range of TBT-free anti-foulings is a world beater,” says the spokesman.
One of three R&D centres for Hempel decorative paints is located in Kuwait with the others sited in China and Spain.
The company’s R&D centres for marine paints are located in Denmark, Spain, Singapore and China while those for protective paints are in Singapore, Denmark and the US.