Price Hikes, Going Global, and Cross-Industry Expansion: What’s Happening in the Coating Industry Mid-Year?
Introduction
As we enter early June 2026, the Chinese and global coating industries are experiencing an unprecedented “strategic window.” Faced with severe cost pressures, foreign industry giants are aggressively announcing price hikes while accelerating their investments in high-end R&D and production capacity in China.
Meanwhile, leading Chinese coating enterprises are breaking out of the domestic residential “red ocean” by establishing overseas factories and venturing into the new energy sector to build their secondary growth curves. Concurrently, functional coatings for niche markets, such as photovoltaics (PV) and marine engineering, are officially transitioning from small-scale pilot tests to large-scale commercialization.
A major industry reshuffle centered on “value” rather than “price” has officially begun.
Foreign Giants: Scaling Back Mega-Mergers, Focusing on High-End Localization
The most striking event in early June was the joint announcement by Nippon Paint and Sherwin-Williams to terminate their acquisition of AkzoNobel. This six-month cross-border M&A saga, which closely held the global market’s attention, ultimately concluded due to AkzoNobel’s firm refusal.
Industry experts generally believe that against the backdrop of highly volatile global chemical raw material prices and sluggish demand in European and American building materials markets, any mega-merger carries excessively high risks. This signals a sharp cooldown for massive multinational acquisitions in the short term, as giants pivot back to strategic priorities: “localized deep-ploughing” and “intensive cultivation of the Chinese market.”
However, “scaling back” does not mean “retreating.” On the contrary, foreign giants are doubling down on the Chinese market through highly targeted approaches:
Cost Pass-Through Synchronized with Product Upgrades
Kansai Paint announced an all-category price hike starting June 15, with solvent-based coatings surging by 20% to 35%. This marks its third major price adjustment within the year, directly increasing procurement costs for downstream industrial clients.
Simultaneously, PPG invested 30 million RMB into technical upgrades for its Kunshan plant. The company proactively eliminated 8,000 tons of low-end, general-purpose anti-corrosion paint capacity, shifting its focus to add 23,000 tons of high-end epoxy, high-solid, and fireproof coating capacity. This move precisely targets high-end projects like marine engineering and LNG storage tanks, debunking the simplistic assumption that solvent-based coatings face immediate total elimination.
Double Commitment to R&D and Capacity
On June 1, Sika officially inaugurated its Asia-Pacific Coating Innovation Center in Shanghai, marking its fourth global R&D hub in China. The center focuses on waterborne polyurethane, dedicated coatings for new energy vehicles (NEVs), and industrial protective coatings. With plans to launch an NEV coating production line within the year, Sika has clearly positioned China as its core technological hub for the Asia-Pacific region. This “R&D-production integration” model aims to secure technological discourse power in the future high-end market from the very source.
Domestic Coating Leaders: Two Breakthrough Paths Reshaping Competition
Faced with fierce domestic competition in the home improvement market, listed Chinese coating companies like Oriental Yuhong, Broadview Chemical (Guangxin Materials), and Huigu New Materials are choosing to either “go global” or “move upscale.”
Path 1: Global Footprint to Unlock Incremental Markets
Oriental Yuhong’s production base in São Paulo, Brazil, is set for full production by late July, serving as its first full-supply-chain base in Latin America. Combined with its prior acquisition of a Chilean building materials firm and equity participation in a Brazilian admixtures plant, Oriental Yuhong has established a mature overseas model of “acquiring channels + building local production lines.” Its overseas revenue accounted for 13.63% of its total in Q1 2026, a year-on-year surge of over 60%, proving that international business is becoming the core engine to break through domestic growth plateaus.
Path 2: Crossing into New Energy to Target High-Value Sectors
Broadview Chemical’s 20,000-ton electronic photosensitive coating project in Jiangxi has entered the trial production phase. The products will supply PCB circuit boards and PV backsheets, aiming to forge the company’s secondary growth curve.
Huigu New Materials has taken an even more aggressive stance. Out of its 420 million RMB investment in the 130,000-ton eco-friendly resin and coating project in Qingyuan, 61% of the new energy coating capacity (mainly targeting power battery casings and PV aluminum profiles) has already been locked in advance by downstream customers. This demonstrates immense market appeal and represents a textbook supply chain integration, extending from upstream resin raw materials down to high-value finished products.
Niche Market Boom: The Dawn of Commercialization for PV Coatings
While the top two trends reflect the strategic choices of industry giants, the large-scale commercialization of functional coatings tailored for photovoltaics offers a “specialized, refined, differential, and innovative” survival blueprint for numerous small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Offshore Photovoltaics: Jotun’s offshore PV anti-corrosion powder coatings have been successfully deployed in China National Nuclear Corporation’s (CNNC) mudflat PV projects. Its double-coating system withstands salt spray for over 8,000 hours with zero VOC emissions, meeting rigorous longevity requirements in harsh marine environments.
Ground Power Stations: In regions like Liaoning and Hebei, nano-self-cleaning PV coatings are being adopted in batches for ground stations exceeding 5MW. Field data indicates that after application, annual power generation can increase by 15% to 25%, while annual cleaning costs drop by 75%. Specialized SMEs like Yingcai and Shunyijie secured substantial orders at the SNEC PV Power Expo leveraging this technology.
Circular Economy: Offering even greater room for imagination, the state-owned China Resource Recycling Group has achieved mass production of “full-color PV micro-coatings.” By recoloring decommissioned PV modules, they transform waste into materials for building curtain walls or carports, opening a brand-new application scenario for coatings in the field of solid waste resource utilization.
Conclusion
The concentrated burst of activity in June 2026 clearly outlines the future competitive logic of the coating industry: the era of “involution” relying purely on low prices and massive scale has come to an end.
The future winners will either be like the foreign giants—building moats through technical innovation and premium products; like the domestic market leaders—finding new blue oceans through globalization or cross-sector transformations; or like specialized SMEs—achieving absolute excellence in hyper-focused niches like PV and electronics.
