Kolkata, Aug 10 (Inditop.com) The Indian Paint Association expects the industry to post 10-12 percent growth this fiscal riding on initial signs of revival of user industries, a top member of the organisation said here Monday.
“We expect the industry to surpass last year’s (2008-09) growth rate of just 9 percent, one of the lowest in recent history when we faced spiralling crude oil prices, which constitutes close to 50 percent of our inputs,” said association’s president Virendra Singhal.
“Signs of revival in the real estate and automobile sectors point to a recovery in the demand for paints,” Singhal told reporters on the sidelines of the association’s annual general meeting.
Indian Paints Association, which claims to represent close to 80 percent of India’s paint makers, has also voluntarily decided to bring down the use of lead to 0.1 percent of weight of inputs of all paints by December 2012 from an average 10 percent now.
This is expected to push up input cost by 3-4 percent.
“We would be shifting from inorganic pigments using lead to costly organic pigments, which would push up our costs,” said Harnish D. Juthani, the next president of the association.
Paint makers such as Kansai Nerolac Paints and ICI have already stopped using lead as a raw material.
Juthani said he did not see any immediate move to raise te price of paints, some of which have petroleum mineral spirits as solvents, despite the recent upward swing in crude prices.
“Crude has breached $70 a barrel but we are still comfortable with our input costs,” he said.
