Industry Overview
The Coatings industry is one of the most colourful sectors of the UK economy. It covers manufacturers of decorative and industrial paints, powder coatings, printing inks and wall coverings. Coatings are produced for everything we use, including the automotive sector, marine, wood finishings, DIY paints, packaging, coating for plastics, and in the case of printing inks, for newspapers.
The Coatings industry comprises some 1,000 UK workplaces, employing around 21,000 employees.
85% of the Coatings industry employs fewer than 50 employees. 75% of the workforce are employed in larger companies.
This industry has its largest presence in the North West of England; over 90% of the total workforce is based in England.
Proskills works with employers from the Coatings Industry to help businesses improve their productivity and competitiveness through skills training. Extensive research and comprehensive employer consultation has identified a need to upskill current and future workforces to enable businesses in this industry to address the challenges they currently face. In particular as the current economic climate forces many businesses to make staff cut backs, there is an increasing need for the remaining workforce to multi-skill.
Skills training is required to help business address the following:
- Skills shortages are particularly prevalent among front line staff, technical staff as well at managerial and supervisory level
- To help businesses ride the storm of the current economic climate and credit crunch, particularly with respect to a drop in demand for products
- The need to meet constantly changing consumer demands and preferences
- To support legislation compliance on Health and Safety as well as Environmental Management, in particular with respect to REACH (Regulation, Evaluation & Authorisation of Chemicals) Legislation
- To improve efficiencies by tightening up processes through lean manufacturing to tackle the issue of rising energy costs and the need for more energy-efficient machinery and processes
- To drive business performance improvements to increase global competitiveness, particularly as over 75% of the industry is foreign owned
- To keep up with changes in production and product technology (mainly solvent to water-based products)
- The ongoing rationalisation of production capacity with mergers, acquisitions and company restructures
- Modernisation and introduction of automated ICT0-based systems