AkzoNobel to invest in China to meet demand

AkzoNobel has announced it is planning to invest around €60M (US$80.8M) to increase the production capacity of its Automotive and Aerospace Coatings business in China. This investment will provide additional momentum for the company’s accelerated growth strategy of achieving revenue of US$3bn in China by 2015 and strengthen AkzoNobel’s leadership position in the country’s automotive refinishes market.

As well as constructing a production facility in Changzhou, the company will build related warehousing, quality control laboratories, support facilities and offices on the site. The project will increase capacity by around 25M litres and the site is projected to be operational in early 2014.

"This investment builds on last year’s acquisition of Prime Automotive and is all about meeting rapidly increasing customer demand,” explained Leif Darner, AkzoNobel’s Executive Committee member responsible for Performance Coatings. "We are also seizing an ideal opportunity to further strengthen our leadership position.”

Jim Rees, managing director of AkzoNobel’s Automotive and Aerospace Coatings business, added: "The automotive and aerospace market in China is forecast to further increase steeply in the coming years and this investment will allow us to capture our share of this growth. Changzhou is the ideal location for this facility as there is a good infrastructure already in place and it is ideally situated in the coatings ‘centre’ of China, with close access to many of our customers.”