Working In The Industry
- The Coatings Sector
- Coatings Sector Statistics (2006)
- Working in the Coatings Manufacturing Industry
- Supply and Demand
- Jobs in the Coatings Manufacturing Sector
- Coatings Manufacture and our Environment
- Qualifications and Skills Valued by Coatings Manufacturing Sector Employers
- Personal Learning and Thinking Skills
- How Coatings are Made
Coatings Manufacturing Sector Introduction
The Coatings Manufacturing industry is made up of 5 different sub-sectors:
- Decorative
- Industrial
- Powder Coating
- Printing Inks
- Wall Coverings
Across these sub-sectors there are a few very large companies. Examples of these include:
- ICI
- Sun Chemicals
- Akzo Nobel
- SigmaKalon
These large companies have bases in a number of countries (multi-national). However, there are also hundreds of small and medium-sized coatings businesses across the UK, often family-owned.
Coating sector employers produce products that have many different uses. These range from getting information across - printing inks used on papers, magazines, the books that we read and a wide range of other products in use daily - to the paints and wall coverings we decorate our homes with... and on to industrial coatings.
Coatings are all around us. They can be decorative and / or protective - designed to act as a seal, preventing damage through wear and tear and corrosion. This helps our environment by reducing the amount of goods we throw away and the raw materials we need to use to create replacement goods.
Consider the millions of cars in use in the UK and the coaches, boats, trains and planes... all of them have coatings on them. There are also powder coatings, such as the ones used on "white goods" like fridges, cookers and washing machines.
However many industrial coatings are not designed for their looks and some exist completely unseen. Examples of these include:
- coatings applied to fibre optic cables and the hard disks in computers
- coatings on the inside of the cans that contain our food and drink – (coated to prevent contamination by rust)
- coatings that prevent rust on the steel beams used in construction
- coatings on waterproof clothing
As well as these everyday coatings, there are also special ceramic coatings like the ones applied to space shuttles to protect them from the extreme heat they encounter on their return to earth.
Coatings companies are continually carrying out extensive research, to improve and expand their product range and services. This has led to many new coatings being developed and in the future their uses will continue expanding.
