Reformulating your paint mix – FP Pigments at MECS 2023

PPCJ spoke to Andy White, of Finland’s FP Pigments, about the company’s participation in the Middle East Coatings Show and why the Egyptian market is of interest.

What are you promoting at the show?

At the show, via our distributor Newtrac, we’re promoting a number of our products, which are essentially an augmented version of titanium dioxide. It’s a fancy version of TiO₂ that you can reformulate to use a little less of the older versions of TiO₂, which is cheaper, or else you can improve the performance of your product.

How is the show going for you?

It’s a very good show. I’ve been at the last couple of Middle East Coatings Shows, which obviously weren’t in Egypt because of COVID, and this is at least as busy as both of those. It’s really great to be able to see the Egyptian customers because a lot of them didn’t travel to Dubai in the past. It’s been pretty interesting so far.

Is Egypt an important market for you?

Yes. Our product steals a little bit of the titanium dioxide market so when you think about the size of the economies that use titanium dioxide, Egypt is about 30-50k tonnes of titanium dioxide, which is about half of what the UK is, for example. And it’s growing rapidly, because it’s a growing economy, so it’s interesting to us – as are a lot of other economies around the world.

This is our first time here for four years because of COVID. Do you think things have gone back to normal or do you still notice any hangovers from COVID that affect business?

We as a company now don’t. It’s only in the last couple of events I’ve been to that I’ve started to see post-COVID normality and I think that’s more to do with the attendance. People from different geographies didn’t travel in 2022, so things are gradually getting back to normal, I think. The markets are still in turmoil because of COVID and wars but that’s just the nature of the world.

For more information about the show, visit www.middleeastcoatingsshow.com