With the Indian automotive and manufacturing industries going green, the
Rs 11,000-crore Indian paints industry too is following suit and making its products more environmentally friendly.
"Globally there is a shift from solvent-based products to water-based ones since they are eco-friendly. We have done away with the use of metals like lead and mercury that could have harmful effects on the consumers," says ICI India Ltd Director MR Rajaram. Nearly 70 per cent of the decorative segment for ICI is water-based and its entire product range carcinogen free.
Interestingly, the automobile sector has also taken to using green paints on its products. According to the new European Union norms for automobile recycling, which will come into effect in 2010, once a vehicle is ready to be the scrapped in the EU territory, 80-85 per cent of its parts ought to be recyclable or reusable. This has compelled auto manufacturers in the country to use more environmentally suited paints to comply with the EU norms. Little surprise then that Hero Honda Motors Ltd has taken up the use of water-based paints at its new Haridwar facility.
"We have introduced the three-coat one-bake system for the four-wheeler industry, where three wet-on-wet coats are applied and baked together against the conventional three-coats three-bake system, thus improving productivity at the customers' end and tremendous saving in power consumption," says Ashok Saini, vice-president (special projects), Kansai Nerolac. The company is also bullish on the eco-friendly powder coating business in India.
The Indian affiliate of the German luxury car manufacturer Audi, on the other hand, has signed an agreement with BASF to use its eco-friendly waterborne premium refinish paint system
