2021 Beckers Sustainability Award Products with Impact: Developing more sustainable coating resins in India
Beckers India has developed new resins made from waste materials such as used PET plastic bottles as part of its ongoing journey to produce more sustainable coatings. The team in India won the 2021 Beckers Sustainability Award Products with Impact for its work with more sustainable resins.
Integrating more sustainable raw materials from the outset
“We based our new resins on more sustainable raw materials right from the very beginning of the design phase,” says Chetan Prakash, Vice President Technical and R&D at Beckers India. “This is a whole new mindset and way of developing new products that will enable us to meet the growing demand for more sustainable coatings going forward.”
In a joint venture with Berger Paints, Beckers India has developed resins based on waste raw materials at its own lab in Nagpur since 2018, and has tested the resins at Berger’s facilities. A resin made from used PET plastic bottles has been developed along with a resin from waste wet IPA monomers. The team in India produced 17 tonnes of PET-based resin and over 127 tonnes of Wet IPA based resin in 2021.
“Commercial trials of paints based on these two resins together with our customers have been very successful,” says Prakash. “And importantly, comprehensive testing in our labs in India, the UK and Malaysia has proved that the paints have just as good properties as conventional paints based on virgin raw materials.”
Long-term focus on sustainability
By using these two waste products as raw materials in our products, we can reduce waste and plastic pollution in societies around the world. In addition, biomass briquettes are currently used in Berger’s plant and our plant will also use briquettes biomass when it is complete in 2023.
“Sustainability is the mantra of our work going forward – to promote resource circularity, reduce pollution and avoid hazardous substances,” says Prakash. “But this is just the beginning of our journey as we increase our investments and continue to develop a new resin plant in Nagpur that will help us to formulate and produce more sustainable resins from 2023.”
With our customers increasingly demanding more sustainable resins and coatings, our pioneering work with waste raw materials in India has the potential to drive positive change throughout Beckers globally. Importantly, these products based on waste raw materials are proving that sustainability and profitability can go hand in hand.
Sustainability Award winner – Products with impact
In February 2022, the Beckers Sustainability Council awarded the team in India the Beckers Sustainability Award ‘Products with impact’ for their work with sustainable coating resins. The council praised how the team turned a problem into a solution by producing more sustainable coatings from plastic waste. The use of coatings made from plastic waste also has huge market potential – not only in India, but all around the world.